Food & Culture

Painter Cable Griffith Unveils New Works at G. Gibson Gallery

The exhibit Sightings elicits awe and pleasure

By Jim Demetre December 14, 2015

1215datebookopener_0

This article originally appeared in the December 2015 issue of Seattle Magazine.

Painter Cable Griffith’s landscapes bring an electronic pulse to pastoral scenes, fusing the order of human-built infrastructure with the chaos of the natural world. The smooth surfaces and rounded contours of his trees, islands, hills and rivers; the deeply saturated palette with its warm, backlit glow; and the stilted perspectives and cartoonish sense of scale owe as much to video games and systems-design graphics as they do to Albert Bierstadt and other painters of the American West.

Griffith, 40, who is also a curator and faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts, describes Sightings, his December exhibition of new works at G. Gibson Gallery, as “conceived in conversation with the history of landscape painting, notions of the sublime and reports of unexplained phenomenon in contemporary society.” The luminous presence that lurks behind the trees in “Mysterious Light in the Woods” (above) brings awe, terror and a sense of pleasure reminiscent of the works of early Romantic painters such as Caspar David Friedrich. The nature of this light in our own world may be less divine and possibly the result of some as yet unrecognized human activity. Or possibly aliens. 

 

Join The Must List

Sign up and get Seattle's best events delivered to your inbox every week.

Follow Us

Datebook: Fall Arts Finds

Datebook: Fall Arts Finds

A look at some of the upcoming season’s hottest works

As the long, hot days of summer melt away into cooler temps and earlier evenings, Seattleites are about to make the seasonal shift toward indoor activities. While monthly art walks and occasional museum visits are popular year-round, for those in the know, back-to-school sales also signal the start of Fall Arts: the time of year…

A City by Design

A City by Design

Seattle Design Festival seeks to create equitable, thriving communities

THE LARGEST DESIGN FESTIVAL in the Pacific Northwest is right around the corner, and organizers are asking residents to weigh in on Seattle’s future self. The Seattle Design Festival, which began in 2011, runs from Aug. 19-24. It features interactive cultural events across the city with an overarching theme of “Curiosity.” Festival organizers anticipate that…

Blender Bender

Blender Bender

Seattle's experience research lab tells stories through artwork, installations and architecture

Back in March 2021 — just as the drab Seattle winter started to give way to lighter days and slightly higher temperatures — a storefront niche on the always-thronged corner of Capitol Hill’s Pike and Broadway intersection underwent a transformation. Formerly an easy-to-miss entryway sandwiched between a coffee shop and Neighbours Nightclub, the small, windowed…

Discovering Taylor Swift

Discovering Taylor Swift

A mosh-pit era music fan attends the Taylor Swift concert and finds a culture of kindness in Seattle

The takeover was complete. King County Council named July 18th-25th Taylor Swift Week, “for serving as a positive role model for women and girls,” the proclamation read. She would become the first artist to play Lumen Field two nights in a row. I said to myself: that’s cool, with a shrug. I was not a Taylor…