It is always rewarding as a viewer to be in the hands of a mature, technically accomplished artist.
That is certainly the case with Chuck Forsman, 67, who brings reliably self-assured polish and purpose to his latest paintings, 10 of which are on view through Oct. 29 in a solo exhibition at the Robischon Gallery.
Though Forsman, who retired in 2008 as a professor of art at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is about to embark on the fifth decade of his career, his handsome, thought- provoking work has lost none of its vibrancy and freshness.
Panoramic grandeur, dynamic brushwork and buoyant colors combine in a style that, at first blush, appears to share the romantic fervor of the great 19th-century Hudson River painters.
But unlike the glistening landscapes of those artists, there is little that is idealized or blissful about Forsman’s scenes, which explore and subtly comment on sometimes uncomfortable intersections of history and humankind’s often pernicious interventions into nature.
Indeed, some of his paintings can be even be unsettling, none more so than the eerily beautiful right panel of the diptych, “Honeymoon.” Its hard to see its puffy, elongated clouds without thinking of the Challenger disaster in 1986.
Forsman appears to be both in awe of and repulsed by many of the scenes he depicts, such as vast tracts of land sliced up for cookie-cutter tract housing or mountains cut away and disfigured in huge mining operations.
Indeed, it is this paradox between the seeming romantic aspirations of these works and the tough subject matter that they contain that give them much of their power.
“I don’t really know how much of that is by choice or just by temperament,” Forsman said. “We are who we are, and I’m a very emotional person. I like epics. I tend to try to understand little things by looking at big pictures.
“On the other hand, everything that I do as an artist seems to be like a yo-yo. I want to reach this and I want to reach that. I don’t want to reach a balance in between because that would kind of nullify the paradoxes, and it may lose its vitality.”
Although the artist takes very much a realist approach to these works, with his careful attention to detail and masterful technique, what he achieves is a fictional realism, with impossible, or, at least improbable, perspectives and juxtapositions of subject matter.
Examples include an urban skateboarder leaping off the side of a mountain in “Leap” or an outsized private jet soaring seemingly just dozens of feet above a cow in another mountain scene, “Plots.”
However unlikely these scenes might be, there is nothing random about them. A complex iconography undergirds these meticulously composed images, but their exact meaning inevitably remains open to each viewer’s interpretation.
“I’m not an illustrator,” he said. “I’m am artist. I’m trying to make thoughtful questions. So, there are question marks, and I have my biases. I have my beliefs, which are in there. I might hint. I might insinuate. But they (the paintings) are not didactic.”
Eight of the selections are the final works in Forsman’s 10-year-long “Vietamerican” series, inspired by his service in the Vietnam War in 1968-69 and six “cathartic” return trips beginning in 2000. In these paintings, the artist attempted to explore the complicated relationship between the countries and their fascinating parallels and dissonances.
In the arched, 99-inch-wide oil on panel, “Ends of the Earth,” he explicitly pairs the two countries, offsetting side-by-side images of resonant mountain scenes — the American one on the left rendered in color, the Vietnamese one rendered in black and white, giving it an archival flavor.
“It’s kind of run its course,” the artist said of the series. “I’m anxious to get back and pay more attention to where I live. I’ve always been very committed to being a regionalist, which was a strange but actually an intellectual choice on my part.”
These latest romanticized yet pointed realms of fact and fiction reinforce Forsman’s already recognized place among this region’s top painters.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“Interstate Alms”
Art. Robischon Gallery, 1740 Wazee St. On view is a solo exhibition of 10 recent paintings by Chuck Forsman, a retired professor of art at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Through Oct. 29. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays. Free. 303-298-7788 or .
