Van Gool José

A representational artist, José van Gool has always been intrigued and impassioned by human nature. Her paintings of impressionist inspiration pry into the relationship between color and movement and are playful, rich, and sometimes mournful gestures of a seductive world. The human figure, alone or existing with others, is the central force of each canvas. At times, the figures contrast sharply with the warm, misty backgrounds they are set against, and in other paintings, they melt into these backgrounds, seemingly absorbed. There is little notion of outside disturbances in the compositions. Instead, they dwell in self-contained worlds, nourished by color, comforting and sweetly strange to the viewer who studies them.
A series of these paintings includes women wearing hats and posing in washes of golden yellow, auburn, and brick red. In other pieces, the figures are walking, a mass of hazy color, sometimes deep, sometimes cool. In a bold shift, a group is walking straight on, coming right at the viewer. Van Gool also places her figures in ordinary settings, but the painter transforms them into dreamscapes, hypnotic and vast.