Balla Cloiche (Stonewall) by James Edward Scherbarth

Night comes in from one corner. A stone wall holds out, more or less.

Balla Cloiche (Stonewall) is a painting by James Edward Scherbarth (1949-2021), oil and cold wax medium on cradle board, signed and dated en verso, 2014. Cold wax lets oil paint be built up and abraded much like a weathered surface, which suits a subject of this sort, and a rigid cradle board stands up to the scraping. Blue-black gathers at the upper left, meeting a mottled silver mass that runs down into warm brown. Fine scratches cross the darkest passage. Twenty inches high and twenty wide.

Walls of this sort tend to win in the end.