Carol Robertson

Throughout my career the reductive inclination of my work leads me to use geometric formations, particularly but by no means exclusively, the square, rectangle and circle for their ideal power, for their aesthetic beauty. I have no wish to precisely record the way the world looks, but my work is never disconnected from it. I continue to make informal relationships with landscape, architecture, nature and the environment. I find my work evolves in tandem with whatever is happening in my life, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually and physically. Colour is my key to unlocking experience: it’s an abstract animation of memory, optical sensation and sensory experience.

“The power and beauty of geometric form and detail provides me with a catalyst for ways to make art. Adopting the formal restraints of a reductive and often repetitive geometric language takes the chaos out of what otherwise would be an impossibly vast set of visual options upon which to pin my existence. Geometry allows me to concentrate on the essential. It allows me the freedom to channel sensory or poetic material through its refined parameters.”

“The circle is the most archetypal of all the forms I use: it has a universal resonance, so frequently found in art, architecture and ritual: an evocation of the universe and the heavens: the journey inwards, or outward, to or from the centre: a symbol of wholeness, completion and infinity: the unbroken line with no beginning or end: the eternal cycle.”

I’m a painter and printmaker, primarily living and working in London but I also have a small studio in Dartmoor National Park. Away from the familiar routine of an urban home/studio I find fresh ideas and new stimulation always feed the work. In 1993 I was a British School of Rome awardee and for twenty years I’ve been a Returning Fellow at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Co. Mayo, Ireland. In 2014 I published Carol Robertson + Trevor Sutton - French Paintings in response to a series of shared residencies in the Midi Pyrenées. A recent trip to Central America to look at Maya art and archaeology resulted in a series of paintings and monoprints. In 2012 I was artist in residence at the Kunstgarten in Graz, Austria, where I made 3D objects for the first time: I return for an exhibition in 2019. I am represented by Flowers Gallery in the UK and USA.

Website: www.carolrobertson.net

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