Compare and Contrast

            
             "Northwest of 70th," a painting by Keith Lowry, is about the Nebraska landscape and so is "Platte River Skyscape," by Hon Holoun. Both of these compositions are very similar to each other, while at the same time containing very obvious differences. In the painting by Lowry the subject, more specifically, is the rolling hills of the Nebraska landscape. Then as I look at the other painting, I notice it is about Nebraska too, but in particular about the Platte River. There are also size differences because "Northwest of 70th" is an average size painting, while "Platte Valley Skyscape" is a quite large piece. I think Holoun made his painting bigger to emphasize the how dramatic the Platte Valley really is. It was hard for me to distinguish whether or not either of the pieces were balanced, unified, or proportional. But I feel that Lowry's work is balanced, because the large dark, dull trees in one corner are offset by the brightness in the clouds in the opposite corner. Furthermore, I do not think Holoun's work is as balanced, because, while the light, bright sky is against the dark trees in the foreground, the sky is too large to be balanced out by the small amount of trees there are. I also think his piece is less unified than the latter of the two. This is because the clouds in the sky are a little too circular to draw the eye to the trees, though the trees on the shore and the river itself do create good lines. Lowry's piece, on the other hand, is unified because of how close the tree tops are to one another that the eye jumps from one to the next until they reach the background, which also has good lines in the clouds with the splitting to create sunlight. As far as proportions go, I do not feel Platte is proportional with the large background and smaller foreground. Then on the 70th piece, there is a little more proportion in the larger trees being offset by the hills and the clouds.