Robyn Burgess - Impulse

 

Wednesday 13 November - Sunday 1 December 2024

Click here for artwork by Robyn Burgess

Painting suspends time; it grips the present, acknowledges the past and returns to that illusion of the present; a place where the clock has stopped…for a bit.

These pictures are about that moment in time; a glance, a stance, a chance for continual growth into the next body of work.

Beat eludes to an internal journey rather than an external image. Impulsive, loaded with feeling and introspection; colourful, yet made during a time of immense sadness and isolation.

The work in this show flips and turns in its subject matter, from the sensory to clarity, abandon and chance form alliance. Some hover between the ‘deliberately unfinished’ to works of many layers and revision over time.

Squall is a response to the frantic winter weather seen from my attic window. Made quickly, it does carry the weight of universal concerns but moreover it is about looking and making, without concern for consequences. Like most of these works, there is no narrative – I am not a storyteller but perhaps a rememberer, steeped in elegiac feeling. Behind all of the works is a longing - that the work will arrive at a destination, and when it doesn’t you continue working anyway. There are traces of beloved and previous subject matter and inspiration throughout the works:

1. Travel has enabled me to gather elements of the foreign where I have sought out architecture, nurturing my interest in geometry and the division of space. It has also nourished an interest in extreme climates in winter, such as Russia and Siberia. I have been able to see paintings by artists which have carried me through decades of research and the gathering of new ways of working; for example Velazquez and his works in the Prado. Extensive reading and music have always been an inspiration in my world and are entwined in the paintings.
2. The Bridge evokes my interest in architecture, and acts as a metaphor of the monument and movement of life.
3. The powerful interest in shape and how I can best place forms within the canvas, with consideration for everything from edge to edge; structure, arrangement …invention and compositional devices.

Though I have worked with many mediums, it is my obsession with oil paint which surpasses all that I attempt in works, both small and large – the economy of touch and surface quality within paintings, the texture, viscosity and physicality of paint is wondrous and relentless.

At days end, curiosity menaces the fabric of reality.