Cross on the Shed 2005

Stefan Caltia’s painting, Cross on the Shed, is a landscape that draws you into a whimsical place of wonder. The image comes into being from a limited palette of blues, greens, greys, and whites, carefully applied to construct a dreamlike vision. I can just imagine Caltia at work, building up the texture and colour of the scene with each layer of paint. The shed itself is an ethereal blue, adorned with a simple white cross, somehow becoming more than the average shed! The white blossoming trees add to the scene's dreamlike quality, almost like fluffy clouds suspended in mid-air. I see Caltia’s playfulness with form and his embrace of imperfection in the slightly wonky perspective of the shed and the somewhat naive rendering of the landscape. It reminds me of other folk art traditions where artists like Henry Darger created imaginary worlds with their brushes. I think artists are always in conversation with one another, across time and place, building on one another's work to make something entirely new. And that’s the beauty of painting, isn’t it?