I would be hard put to guess when and where these landscapes were made. Quinn’s work is odd and slightly discomfiting and a list of his inspirations does not help. What is illuminating though is his remark that he is interested in the way that ideas travel through time.
Layers of oil, so thin that they become transparent, have been built up in successive strata on a linen ground. In some of the paintings there are whole webs of structures, in others the ground looks arid, as if it had been wiped dry.
His trees are majestic and several of them are Lindens which produce a pollen which in European myths are said to induce sweet dreams. The show as a whole has the quality of a dream. Spectacular and truly Romantic vistas, they offer the viewer an unsettling and slightly sinister space,
Ged Quinn is at the Stephen Friedman Gallery, 25-28 Old Burlington Street, London W1S 3AN until 18 January