Thomas Ball (Martin Ball’s great grandfather) painted the Pink and White Terraces from life, but his great-grandson’s suite of paintings are based on photographs, also from the time. Martin’s liberal use of titanium white reflects the silica in the geothermal water which, over hundreds of years, had crystallised to form the terraces. His paintings have a bleached quality, a ghostly spectral pallor, and are veiled as if to acknowledge the tragic cataclysm of 1886. The almost dreamlike landscape now appears as a memorial to Nature’s power and unpredictability, in this case the destruction of otherworldly beauty for which no description, it was said, could do justice.
For Martin Ball, best known for his large hyper-realistic and full-colour portraits, this series represents a more historical, a more contemplative approach, painted as they are in shades of greys and soft browns the viewer is presented with another interpretation, this one more concerned with memory and wonder, loss and reverence, both for a great grand-father, and the majesty of a long-departed landscape.
