There are no horizon lines in many of Bruce Ackerson’s oil paintings. The artist’s point of view in these works floats high above crowded scenes, capturing an action-filled landscape that seems to stretch past the edges of the canvas.
Ackerson, 74, says he has always thought of himself as an artist, but it wasn’t until he approached 40 that he left his day job as a graphic designer to begin painting full-time.
He spent four years on and off living in Provincetown in the 1970s and currently lives in Northampton. Ackerson has been showing his work at Rice Polak Gallery in Provincetown for more than 20 years. His current show continues through Aug. 16.
The lack of a horizon and the viewer’s distance from the subjects in his paintings give Ackerson’s work a uniquely cinematic style. “Ninety percent of my paintings are maybe about 40 feet above the action,” he says. “The figures in my paintings look like they’re in a scene from a movie.”
A good example is Stuntmen. The painting depicts a chase across the tops of the cars of a freight train, with three black-suited cops pursuing three men leaping from the train, arms comically extended.
“I was going to have the cops just chase one person,” says Ackerson, “but I started out painting three. I was going to select which figure I wanted to have them chase, but I ended up liking all three.” He says playfulness, not actual danger, is at the heart of the painting. “I titled the painting Stuntmen, implying that they’re in a movie and nobody’s going to die. One of my friends said, ‘What about the guy jumping toward the waterfall, not towards the sea? He’s going to get killed.’ And I said, ‘No, he’s a stuntman. He’s got it figured out.’ ”
Ackerson says storytelling is at the heart of his work. “All my paintings have a story that often develops as I’m painting,” he says. Part of what creates the storyline is that the distance from the subjects obscures their facial expressions, forcing the viewer to pay attention to the broader action rather than the individual characters.
Ackerson says his painting Little Men tells a story of female strength, despite the women subjects’ backs being turned to the viewer. “The female figures in front are supposed to be strong, powerful women,” he says. “I tried to get that across by their physical expressions, the way they’re standing.” The men on the other side of the chasm are puny, almost disappearing into the edges of the canvas, while the women stand on the higher ground, almost in the canvas’s center. Their stances exude a carefree strength. “These women are not taking any shit from these men who are ogling them across the inlet,” says Ackerson. “They could eat those men alive.”
While the human subjects in Ackerson’s paintings are the first thing to catch one’s attention, the more time one spends with the work the more the vivid landscapes come into focus. Water is a major element in nearly all of the paintings.
“There’s an infinite number of ways you can paint water,” says the artist. “It’s a challenge every time. And I like the contrast of land and water. People being in one or the other or both.”
The water in Ackerson’s paintings tells a story. In Pool Party, it has a soft, magical quality created by interlocking circles of light, while the river in Little Men has strength in its rolling texture and its color, changing across the canvas from dark blue to a sunstruck yellow.
The point of view, expressive figures, and vibrant landscapes create a sense of expansiveness in Ackerson’s work. “There’s much more going on outside of what I’m showing in the painting,” he says. His paintings are windows into worlds without horizons, where the edge of the canvas isn’t the end of the story.
Vivid Landscapes
The event: Paintings by Bruce Ackerson
The time: Through Aug. 16
The place: Rice Polak Gallery, 430 Commercial St., Provincetown
The cost: Free
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article, published in print on Aug. 10, included an incorrect caption and credit for the photograph of Bruce Ackerson. It was taken by Warren LeNoir, not Keith Edwards, and it shows Ackerson at the Rice Polak Gallery in Provincetown, not his Northampton studio.
