Whitewash

Whitewash — which appeared in the Saatchi Gallery’s critically lauded tripartite 2011 exhibition The Triumph of Painting — is a characteristically dramatic and lyrical work by the British painter Dee Ferris. From afar, it might appear to be a swirling morass of blue, white and grey, an abstract composition in the vein of America’s post-war Action Painters. Glance closely, though, and an oceanic scene becomes visible: frothing white waves crashing over an aquamarine sea, a depiction of the natural sublime that evokes the churning tides of German Romantic painter Casper David Friedrich’s famed 1818 masterpiece Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog. Tiny black forms in the water reveal themselves to be human figures, dwarfed by the majesty that surrounds them. The expressive techniques of non-representational art — such as the dripping peals of paint in the lower part of the canvas — are deployed to enhance the splendour of a representational scene. Even Whitewash’s name, which its double connotations of surfing waves and white paint, stands somewhere between the ocean and the painter’s pot. Ferris’ magnificent seascape is a celebration of the potency of paint itself.