he combines images collected from different media, combining them to suggest new stories. These images are turned into drawings, making the strange new scenes feel personal. Awkward, off-kilter, but definite, compositions and pared-down colour schemes vibrate with Schelde’s feel for texture – not so much the real texture of his ships and sails, lampshades, cube-like buildings, and swirling undergrowth, but the surprising variety of marks that he is able to produce.
Through a thicket of hashes, curves, blocked-in sections, and blank spaces, perhaps Schelde’s monumental drawings aim for the emotional power of a great painting from the past – something that contemporary painting seems unable to tackle. Romance and melancholy loom large in Schelde’s images of rearing horses, stormy seas and starry skies, as if there is an adventure just waiting to be started. Camilla Jalving describes the artist as wavering ‘between the desire to ‘fix’ reality with precision and objectivity, and the desire to pass on an atmosphere, a vision of a landscape, an idea, a dream.’ How far we, the viewers, can enter into this world of ‘inner landscapes’ depends on our own imagination. If we are able to dive in, a land ‘populated by shadowy scenes, figures, and objects’ awaits.
The internationally exhibiting artist will be showing simultaneously at two venues: Vane in Newcastle, and the Customs House in South Shields.
-rebecca hunter

Morten Schelde, ‘In the woods’, Vane, Newcastle and Sandford Goudie Gallery, Customs House, South Shields, February 20 to March 29. www.vane.org.uk ; www.customshouse.co.uk

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