Christopher Pratt: Six Decades by Tom Smart, Firefly Books, 176 pages, $60.
The clean lines and uncluttered landscape of a Christopher Pratt painting are instantly recognizable. The Newfoundland native has achieved enormous success while staying connected to his origins.
This beautifully reproduced retrospective looks at Pratt's entire career from his prizewinning 1954 The Bait Rocks watercolour all the way through to his 2013 Argentia series.
Tom Smart chronicles Pratt's journey from young pre-med student to his transition to art student and committed artist. Smart describes the impact that various artists had on Pratt's development of his own style and through his intelligent analysis these subtle influences become more apparent in the paintings.
The control of simple lines and rectangles are given extra dimension through Smart's descriptions and help provide deeper understanding of how Pratt seeks to find the abstract in the common place.
Pratt is a master of the empty space and within it provides the viewer the chance for their own subconscious to bring forth an emotional response to the well-ordered image.
The clean lines and subtle tones that are Pratt's trademark are presented in large scale in the stunning collection of 140 paintings, many that have not been seen in public before now.
- Terry Peters
A Year at Stonehenge by James O. Davies, Frances Lincoln Publishers, 128 pages, $29.99.
Impartial to the passing of time the rocks at Stonehenge have stood for thousands of years on England's Salisbury Plain. The purpose of the site has long been forgotten and can only be speculated on but there is no doubt about their magnificence.
Photographer James O. Davies began taking pictures of the famed stone circle fifteen years ago but it was mostly over the past five years that he made this collection of images. In an earlier time tourists could freely roam among the massive stones but things have changed and today visitors are kept well back from the site. The access that Davies had makes his images that much more remarkable.
Photographs from every season show a wide variety of views but underscore the permanence of the stones against the passing of time. Archaeologist and writer, Mike Pitts, provides the introduction and offers a brief overview of the history of Stonehenge and the work that has been done at the site.
