Impasto, coming from the Italian word for dough, describes areas of the surface of a painting which are heavily built up with paint layers.
Impastoed paint is highly textured; brush or palette knife marks are usually clearly evident — the intention is to make the light falling across the painting reflect in a particularly noticeable way.
The painting above is one of four paintings of sunflowers dating from August and September 1888. Van Gogh intended to decorate Gauguin’s room with these paintings in the so-called Yellow House that he rented in Arles in the South of France. He and Gauguin worked there together between October and December 1888.
The dying flowers are built up with thick brushstrokes — in the style of impasto. The impasto evokes the texture of the seed-heads.
This painting is by one of the artist from BBuzzArt, Blotea Alexandru. As you can assume from the title of the work, the overall style of the painting is influenced a lot by that of Vincent van Gogh’s. Not only it has similar composition but also the way it is executed, the similarity can be easily seen between the two works above. Painterly brushstrokes and heavy paint layers clearly show that the work is also built up with impasto. However, unlike Van Gogh, Alexandru developed this painting with much more colours — thus bringing much liveliness into the work itself. Instead of merely mimicking the style of Van Gogh, Alexandru went one step further to add something on his own, which let him to achieve his own unique sense of aesthetic into the painting.
Buzzing Art, Budding Artists. www.bbuzzart.com
