Autumn News 2024

         

Lago de Carezza, II, Dolomites, 28 x 35 cm      Falling Rocks, Pyrénées, 29 x 39 cm

I am a landscape painter, and my work is about the spirit of place. I travel the world – and probably as a result of my peripatetic upbringing – I am a restless vagabond. But my work is made in my two studios, one in rural France and one in central London. I work from memory, and from small studies in watercolour that I make from direct observation of nature. My painting is grounded in the very real experience of being in a particular place at a particular time, in a particular season and in a particular light. I like weather. All weather. I also like walking and painting in the mountains, and in this show I’ve included paintings that came to life in many different countries. Since the pandemic I am back on the road. I’ve included paintings of the Massif Central near to where I live in France, the Spanish Pyrenees over the border, the Italian Dolomites and more recently, the Cordillera de Talamanca in Costa Rica and the Sierra Madre del Sur in Mexico.

Titles are very important. 

Since my last London show in October 2022, I have been preparing for this exhibition Common Ground at the new Royal Watercolour Society Gallery, which sits, very elegantly indeed, on Whitcomb Street, off Trafalgar Square. My co-conspirators are Frances Hatch, Caroline McAdam Clark and Linda Saul. We are all friends and members of the Royal Watercolour Society.

The gallery sits next to one of my favourite places in the world, London’s National Gallery, where I hang out whenever I’m stuck with my work. The consolations of great art are healing, and I spend a lot of time in this building and have done since my first year as an art student at Chelsea in 1970. I still have my student copy of Margaretha de Geer (1661) by Rembrandt. It took a month and made me both brave and also immune to the stares of passersby and their often hilarious commentary. A force field is a useful tool for an artist. One has to be vulnerable in order to create something but be simultaneously invulnerable to criticism. A paradox I am still working out after being a professional artist for over five decades.  

This new space on Whitcomb Street, designed by John Nash over 200 years ago for the original RWS, Britain’s oldest art society, has been gloriously reinvented by WilkinsonEyre Architects, and it is impressive. It boasts beautiful lighting, sensitive proportions, a welcoming vibe and room for paintings to breathe.

About a year ago, the four of us Common Grounders discovered how well our work sits together. We all share a profound interest in nature and landscape painting and were keen to move out beyond the remit of our regular RWS shows at the Bankside Gallery, which only shows work in water-based media on paper. Here, at Whitcomb Street, we have incorporated oils, canvases, and mixed media into our show.

I am a little bit ashamed to say that my carbon footprint has been rather heavy in the last few years, especially since the pandemic. Spirit of Place is my subject. Genius Loci as the ancient Romans called it. I never work from photographs and am interested in how memory distorts experience. So, paintings about being in Japan, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica, Chile and my beloved bit of heaven in France Profonde feature in this show.

Since the Curwen Gallery, my home for over 20 years, closed its doors, I have felt hugely bereft, but also strangely liberated. Closely followed by the pandemic, this rupture of my normal artistic life (one-woman shows every two years) I have felt a change come over my work. After becoming allergic to oil paint many years ago, I began to work in acrylic on canvas. But I have always loved the surface of paper and have found a responsible, archival way to reduce paper to its molten pulp state and bond it to canvas or wood or even to other paper as a support.

I don’t consider these new paintings to be collages, as that term is too reductive. I think of them more as assemblages, as I paint over the shards of joined paper pieces with many layers of painted glaze. My influences are various. I see the Matisse cut-outs that hung in my childhood bedroom. A visit to Japan introduced me to the art of kintsugi in my use of gold leaf. I see medieval painting and the Roman mosaics of my childhood in the tessellated pieces of paper. I have slept under an Amish patchwork quilt since my early childhood in Pennsylvania. I even see that.

Wordsworth describes poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity”.

That works for me as a definition of being a painter.

       

Summer News 2024

The studio is very busy this summer as I am working towards Common Ground at Whitcomb Street, next to the National Gallery London, opening October 10th, 2024.

After my trips to Costa Rica and Mexico, I have absorbed new colour palettes and the paintings pulse with new energy. My interest in geological and mineralogical forms can be seen in the series called Santa Clara del Cobre, a town in Mexico famous for its copper mine. Staying in a volcanic area in Central America has altered my sense of horizon.

Working in my studio in France, and spending time outside has led to Elegy I and Elegy II, favourite trees that I look at every day.

The show at the Museum of Paper in Fabriano was a great personal success for me. I received a special commendation from the jury, and the museum has added Tianguis, Aztec Market to their collection.

Tianguis, Aztec Market, Acrylic, paper pulp, watercolour, gold leaf, walnut stain on Fabriano deckled paper. 76 x 56 cm. Collection, Museum of Paper, Fabriano, Italy.

January 2024 News

This year promises to be exciting. In October 2024 I am being joined by three other fellow painters of the Royal Watercolour Society at the RWS Galleries in a show at Whitcomb Street, next to the National Gallery in London. This show is entitled Common Ground. It is a while since I showed a big body of work in London and it is a wonderful space.

I have also just been invited by the Fabriano Museo Della Carta Watercolour Biennial to show my work at the museum in Fabriano near Ancona in July.

I continue to show regularly at the Bankside Gallery London with the RWS. The next show is called Transparency and runs from March 29th to April 27th.

I can now be found on Wikipedia.

Autumn News 2023

It’s been a productive summer in the French studio. With few distractions and with some field trips to the Italian Dolomites and the Spanish Pyrenees, my eyes are full of mountain peaks, deep gorges, and crystalline lakes. The new work explores the notion that landscape is a visual representation of Time. That mountain peaks were once river beds aeons ago, is a constant source of amazement. It is geological alchemy. Mineral History. When I saw the “Ice mummy” known as Ützi in the museum in Bolzano this summer, I was struck by how this man, immured in ice for 5,300 years, was made of the mountains.

My way of working these days deliberately invokes this notion of accretion and destruction. What is left.  I use my huge treasure chest of torn papers as my palette. I prepare the paper in advance, knowing which colours and shapes I will need in the final work, and the shards of paper evoke the traces that weather – wind, storms and glacial movement –  impose on the landscape. As I add more colour, more texture, and more substance, the chest becomes a metaphor for the constantly shifting landscape. Rifling through my chest of paper is an avalanche of colour. When I work into these shards, as I rip and reshape, layer after layer of colour finally reveals itself underneath the final image, like a palimpsest. One painting leads to another.

In some ways they are all one painting. Some of these paintings will be on show at the Bankside Gallery in October 2023 in a show called Risk curated by the Royal Watercolour Society.

A corner of the Studio

The Treasure Chest

Summer News 2023

On June 7, 2023 the inaugural exhibition of the Royal Watercolour Society’s new exhibition space will open on Whitcomb Street, next to the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. This is a historic occasion as this is the gallery where the Society was based 200 years ago. Spread across both of the newly renovated ground and lower ground gallery spaces, RWS NOW will feature original artworks in water-based media by almost every present day artist Member, Associate, Guest and Honorary Members of the RWS. I am very proud to be part of this and I am enormously thrilled that the future of water-based painting is secured as the Society has taken a 250-year lease.

I am still working on a series of paintings inspired by a year’s visit to the Chelsea Physic Garden through the seasons, and many of my paintings will be on show at the Bankside Gallery  from 14 June.

March News 2023

I have just finished a major new painting which has come out of a very productive visit to Provence. I have used ground red ochre paint from Les Ocres de France in Apt. The crumbling walls in the town of Roussillon are an inspiration.

My four little Alta Garrotxa paintings from the Mineral Histories show left the studio to a collector last year.

I felt utterly bereft.

They were key works, that in their small scale, evoked the drama of the mountain landscape of the Catalunyan Pyrenees. I suspected that they might work really well if scaled up. So, over Christmas 2022, I embarked on two large canvases, and discovered the joy of working big – big by my standards – 120 x 90 cms. Of course now I would love to work even bigger, and I have set my sights on some very large canvases for 2023.

I can work big in London.

I left for France in early January and as I am constrained by the practicalities of transporting work back to London, I went back to working on paper.  Some of these works on paper are in the Spring show of the Royal Watercolour Society at the Bankside Gallery opening in March 2023.

A trip in January to wild and freezing Provence was hugely exciting to me. The raw ochres of the Luberon were so beautiful. I found the only factory in France that makes pigment from the rich red and yellow soil of Provence and went on a spree. I like the idea of making paintings about the landscape that are literally made with the landscape itself.

December News

Since the success of my show last month, I am inspired to work on a larger scale and am preparing a polyptych of four large canvases (120 x 90 cm) which will be shown next year. They are an expansion of the four small Alta Garrotxa paintings which are now sold.  I am planning a trip in the New Year back to the Catalunyan Pyrenees. High up in the mountains this journey will be a source of many new paintings. I will need snow tires.

Three of my new works on paper are on display at the Bankside Gallery in the Mini Picture Show (9 Dec – 29 Jan 2023) from the Royal Watercolour Society to which I have recently been elected a full member.

Giclee Prints

For several years I have been working in France on a very successful giclee print collection – to order.
This process enables clients to have a bespoke reproduction of any work in my galleries. They are signed artists proofs. I have now found a London printer who produces high quality giclee prints to order, under my direct supervision, on 350 gram per square metre Hahnemuehle Matt etching paper. These prints are extremely accurate reproductions of the works and come in sizes ranging from A1 (594 x 841 mm) to B2 (500 x 797 mm) to A2 (420 x 594 mm) all the way down to A4. The prices range from £450 for an A1 print down to £250 for the smallest image. The prints can be posted internationally in a cardboard roll directly from the printer once I have signed off the print personally.

If you are interested in learning more, contact Robin.

November 2022 – Mineral Histories, Coningsby Gallery London

About this show:

My work has undergone a seismic shift since my last one person show, three long, difficult years ago. The pandemic led to a reassessment of my life, as it did for so many people. I have been a landscape painter for 40 years, and that is how I still see myself, but there has been a change in my working practice – how I make a painting. In a perverse and unpredictable way the pandemic was artistically liberating for me. No shows on the horizon with all planned exhibitions cancelled. No studio visits. No one looking over my shoulder. Just me in my studio, doing my lockdown walks on Highbury Fields and Hampstead Heath, digging in my garden and escaping, when possible, to my studio in rural France.
Before Covid turned the world to stone I had made a painting trip to Japan, where I was struck by the philosophy of wabi sabi, which celebrates imperfection and transience. This seemed particularly relevant to the world and to me. I began experimenting. I have always used handmade paper in my work, and with this I discovered a new way to fuse abstraction and narrative landscape. As a child brought up in Rome, I have had a long love affair with archaeology and mosaic, and I began to fuse paper shards of colour that I created in advance as though they were tesserae. Matisse’s cut-outs were also very much in my mind and Japanese kintsugi, the method of joining broken shards of ceramic with seams of gold, creating an imperfect but more meaningful object. I had brought back a stack of very precious gold leaf from Kanazawa, and I began to use this treasure to fuse my deliberately broken, torn, ripped and cut paper shards. I then started to paint over the whole image so the finished painting was more like assemblage than collage. My plan chest was stuffed with unfinished works on paper. I had everything I needed.
And one day, in a daze, I picked up a piece of bloodstone that I had chipped out from a hill side in Utah. It had nestled for years in a pile of rock, dried plants, bones and sea glass that occupies a corner of my studio. I suddenly saw that I had my subject matter. I had my material. It was all there. Mineral Histories. A meditation on the passage of Time. An excavation of memory. A celebration of the natural world. All old ideas for me, but now put together in an entirely new way.

Robin is working at the invitation of the Chelsea Physic Garden on a series of watercolours based on the garden through the seasons, which will be exhibited by the Royal Watercolour Society in 2023.