Its apparently an ideal location. Â A pastoral idyl - agricultural, bucolic, rustic and calm. Â Or is it? Â This disturbing work - Austerity Gothic - features two figures in a deceptive landscape. Â They are dressed as though they farm the rural location in which they stand, but something is off. Â Something - or perhaps a lot - is not quite right.
The artist invites us to observe how ill at ease the couple are. Â The do not stand together - despite their proximity. Â He, nervously smiles while she, calculating and cold, is slightly set back.
The title is the clue to the discordant note established from the first glance. Â Despite the promise of countryside charm and quiet sufficiency, the dated implement he hods, the clothing, the absence of warmth in the persons or their background all point to the deception.
This is not a farm of bliss - its a failing sales pitch. Â The goodwill one might feel for a contented pair of toilers of the land is squandered by the evident emptiness of the promise. Â The artist has stripped the couple bare, shown them to be impoverished and with a vision of impoverishment that satisfies them.
Interesting to note that at the time this work was created the sitters for the two figures were themselves involved in a national push for decades of poverty in a nationalistic cause. Â They were scandalously associated with views that would ignore people, problems, jobs, health and all other concerns as they hollowed out public life to reach a goal that transcended all else. Â Separatism.
Here the artist uses that ethical void, the chasm vaunted by the sittersâ demeanor and betrayed in their faces, to paint a disconcerting portrait of harbingers of dystopia.
This is an excellent piece that haunts most who see it.
©The Nat Gallery of Sturgeon