A teacher of figure drawing and painting at the Art Center School and an admirer of the Renaissance side of fellow instructor Lorser Feitelson, Glenn Vilppu is not ignorant of contemporary compositional solutions. The intellectual breaking up of pictorial space through use of figurative and natural forms nonetheless leaves one with the impression that some drastic but apparently painless cropping has been done to some old masters who were themselves guilty of mannerist posturings. Romantic, flowing, Blake-like figures floating in idyllic landscapes are rarely entirely contained within the confines of the picture. Legs, arms, fragments of torsos, heads and feet, fronts and backs come and go on all four sides—whatever the artist feels the composition predicts. The disjointed treatment of the poseur is more interesting than the full one might have been, but even that is meager fare. It’s nice to know it can be done.
—Curt Opliger
