BUSH 2008.109

Stephen Bush works with lurid abstraction and figurative realism, creating juxtapositions of the visceral and the sublime. With I am a mountain I can see clearly, Bush has brought the work of nineteenth-century English Romantic painter John Martin (1789–1854), popularly known as ‘Mad Martin’, into unlikely alignment with alpine scenery, depicting a rustic cabin that echoes the nostalgic scenes on 1970s chocolate boxes. Bush borrows conventions from historical landscape painting, such as the romantic sublime and the picturesque, to dismantle the associated elements of such traditions.