Book Review: Reflections: The Paintings of Basil Campbell

I was approached by publisher Emery Press Books to write a review for this book and I said alright too quickly without doing research.

I didn't quite like this book so it's gonna be awkward to write a negative review for a free book by an artist I don't even know. But hey, art is subjective so maybe there will be people who can appreciate the book better than I do.

Basil Campbell is a self taught Jamaican artist who has moved to USA to work. He has worked in the furniture finishing business for 29 years before retiring in 2017. Since retirement, he has picked up painting after realising how big the industry is for paintings. He was inspired and learned from Bob Ross and Michael James Smith.

Reflections is a self published books that collects some of his paintings. You'll see yachts, animals, cityscape, nature, or whatever that catches his attention. Basil definitely has the skills because you can see that his techniques are quite good, and he has the patience to paint intricate details. Each painting also comes with a short caption.

Alright, here are some reasons why I don't like the book.

The book was printed by those print-on-demand services. The hardcover is actually alright but the paper used is those copier paper. The coloured prints look alright but the feeling you get with this book makes me think "why use those print-on-demand services?" It cheapens the look and feel of the book.

The second thing I don't like is some of the artworks look blur. All the artworks featured are paintings so I'm pretty sure photos were taken so that the art can be digitised. For some reason, many of the paintings that were related to nature has this slightly soft look. It's like maybe the resolution of the photo wasn't high enough, so the photo has to be scaled up and software has to make everything softer to compensate. That or the image compression used is just too aggressive, or both.

I did a search online for Basil Campbell and could not find his presence online. There's no art shared online and no original to compare to.

Another thing that misses the mark is the paintings look like photo snapshots. Alright, many of the paintings were indeed painted from photo references. There's nothing wrong with that except I find the composition of most paintings to lack impact. Good artists and photographers are usually very particular about composition. I just don't see any striking images with strong composition.

One last thing. I don't think the font for the title on the book cover works. And you can see the image softness I was talking about too on the cover art.

For a hobbyist painting, Basil has pretty good technical skills. I'm pretty sure this book is a collection of work over the years that he's proud of. Not all artworks would look good, I know because many of mine don't look good and I certainly can't paint acrylic or oils as well as him. It's just a combination of factors that don't make this artbook stand out.

A few horizontal paintings were printed in portrait orientation like this. I'm not sure how I few about this but I guess it can't be helped since those print-on-demand services can't guarantee alignment across pages.