The classic landscapes of Ralph Carpentier

There’s something completely classic about landscapes painted by Ralph Carpentier. It could be the way light glows. Or maybe it’s the intense sense of mood radiating from each composition, drawing the eye deep into the landscape through the interplay of land and sky elements. The complementary shapes that rhythmically echo make it easy to feel at one with the image.

None of these effects are achieved by accident: Mr. Carpentier draws on traditions and techniques from 17th century Dutch landscape painters, Hudson River School (1825-1875) and Cubist painters to make his own art. Mr. Carpentier’s paintings and drawings are part of a group show currently on view at the Pamela Williams Gallery in Amagansett that includes works by Carolyn Conrad and Elwood Howell.

Of the pieces on view, Mr. Carpentier’s work reflects the clearest devotion to classical technique in paintings that reflect contemporary East End landscapes without being exact depictions.

The paintings are born from exacting, non-expressionistic drawings Mr. Carpentier makes in the field, and it is in the painting process that Mr. Carpentier’s signature style unfolds. The composition is carefully thought out. Subtle repetitions of shapes and movement are layered throughout the painting. Colors of barns, ocean, beach and other elements are changed to infuse the painting with the mood Mr. Carpentier is wants to establish.

Items of interest are introduced to add force to the composition. This could mean adding a line of shrubs to add depth or extra roof lines to add interest. Figures are frequently inserted to imply narrative and impart motion.

“A painting is different than a drawing,” Mr. Carpentier said. “It’s an entirely different adventure than a drawing. A painting is about making a composition that works. It has a certain logic and needs a subject matter in a planned way to make a painting that works.”

Above all, composition is the most important thing. When starting out as a landscape painter in the 1950s, Mr. Carpentier pored over art history books and went to museums to study composition. He connected with the landscape painters from the Hudson River School and 17th Century Dutch landscape painters. Works by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and George Braques (1882-1963) also influenced his style.

While nothing is rendered as flat or distorted in Mr. Carpentier’s paintings, he subscribes to the Cubist theory that art shouldn’t copy nature, but invoke it. His technical approach is to make use of horizontal lines and repetition of rhythmic shapes in order to form a dialogue between elements.

“Composition is everything,” he said. “As your eye moves along the painting, it is the narrative gestures that bring you inside the painting and keep you there.”

Mr. Carpentier’s work was influenced just as much by the people he met on the East End. He and his wife, Hortense, moved to Springs in the late ’50s. Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) was already in residence and so was Willem de Kooning (1904-1997). Mr. Carpentier never met Pollock but had conversations about art and life with de Kooning as their daughters were the same age and they were neighbors of sorts.

But it was the fishermen and farmers who made a lasting impact on Mr. Carpentier’s paintings. In the couple’s early years on the East End, he was a commercial fisherman, taught art at East Hampton High School in the late ’60s, and at Southampton College from 1969 to 1973.

Through these jobs, Mr. Carpentier said he got to know a community that was far from cohesive and not necessarily talkative. He continued his education in the rhythms of life on the East End when he became the director of East Hampton Town’s Marine Museum and curator of marine history in 1966. He left for a time and returned as director in 1975.

On his first day of work in 1966, the lifesaving station was carted away. Recently, it was returned to the Marine Museum site in Amagansett. One of his paintings on view at Pamela Williams Gallery captures the historic moment.

“I don’t normally document with my paintings, but with this one, I thought I should,” he said. “It was a big deal when the lifesaving building was moved back to the site where it originally came from. I had painted the view before and I was struck by how much it had changed in 30 years. I thought I should make note of that and show how things had changed.”

Getting to know the people of the East Hampton area gave him insight into how the landscape related to actual use by the inhabitants and what it meant to them. Most of his paintings include a figure or two. Black Labradors are often included as they seemed to represent the rural East End that used to be.

Despite this, Mr. Carpentier’s paintings do not make a statement about vanishing landscapes or changing ways of life. They do not have a preservation message and are not nostalgic for days gone by. They are simply paintings—ones that have been built on the best compositions the artist can come up with and are couched in the most effective techniques developed by esteemed painters who worked before him, he said.

Since 1955, Mr. Carpentier has made paintings from East End views he finds interesting. What typically draws his interest are historic architectural forms that provide contrast to the natural world around them.

The slope of a roofline, the jut of a church steeple, farmhouses, outbuildings, even the Maidstone Club have all become subjects to inspire paintings. Big skies, intense light, a horizontal plane that stretches outward toward infinity all make him reach for his sketchbook to illustrate the view that will inspire paintings.

“This is the best place in the world to be living,” Mr. Carpentier said. “There’s always something interesting that catches my eye.”

Mr. Carpentier exhibits at the Pamela Williams Gallery in Amagansett and the Nabi Gallery in Manhattan. He has also shown at Guild Hall in East Hampton, the Heckscher Museum in Huntington and in galleries in East Hampton, Manhattan and elsewhere.

The group exhibition of works by Ralph Carpentier, Carolyn Conrad and Elwood Howell remains on view through November 11 at the Pamela Williams Gallery Ltd, 167 Main Street, Amagansett. The gallery is open Friday through Monday from 11a.m. to 5 p.m. For information, visit www.pamelawilliamsgallery.com or call 267-7817.