Art 101: Impasto

Today's term, which is from the Italian for dough, comes to mind because of the way Alan Jones, whose work is in the gallery right now, uses oil paint.

Impasto, according to the art experts at the Tate in London, is "an area of thick paint, or texture, in a painting. First noticeable in Venetian Renaissance painters Titian and Tintoretto, then in Baroque painting, for example Rubens. Increasingly notable in nineteenth-century landscape, Naturalist, and Romantic painting.

"Use of impasto became more or less compulsory in modern art as the view took hold that the surface of a painting should have its own reality rather than just being a smooth window into an illusionistic world beyond. With this went the idea that the texture of paint and the shape of the brushmark could themselves help to convey feeling, that they are a kind of handwriting, that they can directly express the artist's emotions or response to the subject."

Of course, a painting is worth a thousand words. Come in to the gallery and see how Alan defines impasto.