Hazy watercolor illustrates a green landscape and blue mountain in the distance. Most of the work is covered by a large, deep-yellow and gray cloud filling the otherwise teal sky.

Thomas Sgouros

Remembered Landscape 14 • VIII • 96

Maker

Thomas Sgouros (American, 1927 - 2012), (RISD BFA 1950, Illustration; RISD faculty 1962-2007)

Title

Remembered Landscape 14 • VIII • 96

Year

August 14, 1996

Medium

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

Materials

watercolor

Supports

Dimensions

Sheet: 50.8 x 54.6 cm (20 x 21 1/2 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Label: Exhibition label from Virginia Lynch Gallery on mat

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Museum purchase: Gift of the Artist's Development Fund of the Rhode Island Foundation

Object Number

1998.83

Type

Publications

  • Journal

Manual / Issue 17: Variance

This issue complements the RISD Museum exhibition Variance: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability, on view through October 9, 2022.

Exhibition History

Variance
Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability
Feb 01, 2022 – Oct 09, 2022

Label copy

This luminous watercolor might suggest a particular location as well as what a memory of a place might feel like. Thomas Sgouros began this series as an established artist, after he abruptly lost much of his eyesight to macular degeneration, leading him to develop a new method for painting.

As he explained in a NetWorks Rhode Island video, “I look through a jeweler’s loupe so I can . . . see values. . . . They’re remembered landscapes, they’re not acute observations of reality. . . . [They are] a recognition of the entire canvas and the shape relationships-the big against the little, the rough against the smooth, the cool against the warm, which is the language of painting and what made losing my sight not that large a tragedy in the last analysis.”

Tradition and Innovation in American Watercolors
Jan 27, 1999 – Apr 11, 1999

Label copy

Sgouros creates depth and atmosphere by layering thin washes of pigment, each added only after the previous has dried. By then wetting and rubbing out sections, he reveals the underlying colored layers, whose tints are otherwise merely suggested in their combinations.

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In copyright This object is in copyright

Tombstone

Thomas Sgouros (American, 1927 - 2012)
Remembered Landscape 14 • VIII • 96, August 14, 1996
Watercolor on paper
Sheet: 50.8 x 54.6 cm (20 x 21 1/2 inches)
Museum purchase: Gift of the Artist's Development Fund of the Rhode Island Foundation 1998.83

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