Leo Arnold’s work centres the classical task of the European painter; depicting the essence of the paysage. Arnold’s landscapes take place behind the window of the Eurostar train. Born in London and residing in Amsterdam, Arnold captures the muddled colours of the countryside between the two cities, applying thin washes to expose the canvas weave below it, or else thick impasto areas achieved with a paint knife or his finger. Paint trickles down the canvas as the train rattles along the track. The view is bisected by streaks of light and shadow reflecting off the glass and sloping lines of the plastic window frame. The works are diaristic, an abstraction of a voyage, with a shadow of romanticism cast over the terrain.

Arnold was Jo Baer’s studio assistant and companion. While Baer’s long career has seen radical shifts in style, she is best known for her minimalist paintings, prominently featuring compositions of white centres flanked by bands of black or colour. At the time, Baer obsessed over Mach Bands, an optical illusion which exaggerates the contrast between edges of differing shades of black and white. The artist’s surface level paintings emphasised light above all else. In her final years, Arnold would work on Baer’s canvases, making clear outlines in paint to direct her vision.

In contrast, Arnold’s work has a murky, haptic quality. Each mark is tacked on, conceived by making the former – a painterly slowness that is afforded to imprecision. Coincidentally, he has honed in on another perceptual principle, saccades, ballistic eye movements that abruptly change the point of fixation. The same function that moves Arnold's eye across the canvas directs his gaze across the landscape, darting between points of focus on the moving train.

— Written by Blue Marcus