The Miami Herald
The Power of Landscapes
Works by Michael Sastre
March 7, 1999
It is a pity that the space at the Dade Cultural Resource Center, a launching venue for many artists in our community (some of excellence), is so small to accommodate the landscape exhibition by Michael Sastre, a truly first-class exhibition.
The exhibitor, who has lived many years in our area and graduated from Florida International University, is above all his training and ongoing projects, a born landscape painter. Sastre captures what is possible in landscapes in all their facets and spectrum. He also has the ability to use nature as a vehicle to tell a story.
Of all the narratives the artist has extracted from his landscapes, the most dramatic and open-ended is when he uses the ocean as a spacial backdrop, and the figures of “rafters” (boat people) as protagonists, in a man and nature relationship of life and death.
Without a doubt, the decision to use the boat people as protagonists was the result of Michael having worked for five years at the Krome Immigration Detention Center in Miami. There he was in daily contact with those who seek freedom by making the treacherous crossing in the waters off the Florida Straits.
First-rate examples in this series are works such as ‘Rudderless’ and ‘Nightwind’. However, where the artist brings everything to bear in his treatment of man and the sea is in the impressive piece titled ‘The Snag’. In this painting we find two men in a precariously flimsy boat being circled by an enormous squalus in a churning ocean.These elements form a kind of trinity that reinforce the reality of the sea epic in all its confluence.
In works such as this, we see the efficacy of the artist’s strong brushstroke, which in some instances may remind us of Van Gogh and his intelligent and copious use of color. In these dramatic paintings, there is a material paint quality that ads to the depth of the narrative.
In spite of the drama the artist conveys, there is in his approach something very special. It is the benefit of detachment- an objectivity in the presentation of his imagery that paradoxically, instead of taking away emotional engagement, reinforces the benefits of meticulous observation- an observation that is true to the reality of objects in nature.
Sastre passes with ease from landscapes of the ominous to landscapes of the beautiful. Works like ‘Santa Fe River’, where the artist establishes a rich play of reflections, or the delicate but intense ‘St. Mark’s Preserve’, give faith to the existence of enchanted places; of nature in the stages of full plentitude.
This exhibition reaffirms the quality of an artist who knows what he wants to paint and knows how to paint it- something that is too often overlooked. Sastre is truly a visual naturalist, with an individual voice, and from these individual works he assumes the best of what is possible in landscape painting.
By Armando Alvarez Bravo
The Miami Herrald