Article in Galleries Magazine: Robin Richmond 'On Solitary Fields'

Agrigento, Sicily, acrilic on canvas, £3500

Robin Richmond transcribes landscape and stirs emotion, confidently evoking that intangible sense of infinity, known as the romantic Sublime.  A fiery heat glows in renderings of ancient Sicilian places like Agrigento. In others, like Chekhov’s Dream and Ice Sings –  the diaphanous textures of Lake Rouffiac in January – blues, whites, violets, mauves and jades float and freeze. Warmth and cold enhance one another in Solitary Fields.

Chekhov's Dream, acrylic on canvas, £4750

These canvases encourage the eye and the mind to negotiate distance, depth, reflection and even time, exploring the very borderlines and edges of perception. The notion of an “event horizon”, a boundary in space-time where new forces come into play, springs to mind. Time haunts her History of a Silver Birch Tree in Six Chapters.  Weathered bark becomes almost like human skin, a metaphor for deep time. Her ninth and biggest show so far at Curwen & New Academy reveals a heightened power and concentration.

Corinna Lotz, Galleries Magazine, March 2014

Robin Richmond : On Solitary Fields

6-29^th March 2014

Private View: Wednesday 5^th March 2014 from 6-8pm
Artist Talk: Tuesday 18^th March at 7pm

“Robin Richmond is one of the finest painters working in Britain today” 

Art Review

“Robin Richmond has surely found herself a secure space within the upper echelons of the present incarnation of British Landscape painting”

 Julian Freeman, British Art Journal

Robin Richmond’s work has always been about the physical act of remembering. Her landscapes appear as if glimpsed fleetingly, like mirages with only trace elements of the reality behind seeping through. Swathes of layered colour allude to sky or soil, creating atmospheric, half remembered impressions of horizons, lakes and fields. All are definite places in the world; each painting is precisely titled as an existing location, however we view them as if through a veil or a dream.

Although produced from numerous studies made in nature, these paintings attempt to evoke a sense of place rather than making a literal transcription of a particular environment. They tread a delicate balance between figuration and abstraction, as much recalling an emotional response to the landscape as its factual contours.

[1] The majority of her current works are inspired by French, Sicilian and Italian landscapes. Amongst these are the characteristic skies and textured grounds which are recognisable as archetypal depictions of locations in these countries. Many of the works in this show are made from an isolated studio in South-West France, next to the forested Lake Rouffiac (left) which so often appears as a subject in her paintings.
	[2]

The title of the show, On Solitary Fields is taken from A Light Exists in Spring a much loved poem by Emily Dickinson describing Dickinson’s almost religious experience of nature, specifically in relation to a particular quality of light experienced in Spring. When alone in nature Robin Richmond too is touched briefly by this light whilst in “solitary fields”, a transient experience which she attempts to encapsulate in her paintings.

Robin Richmond lives and works in London and South-West France. She is the author of 7 books and is a regular contributor to numerous arts journals. She has work in a number of museum collections, as well as many private and corporate collections. She attained both her Fine Art BA and her MA in Art History at Chelsea School of Art. She has been a fellow and Artist in Residence at Yale University, USA since 2003. Last year her work was the subject of a major retrospective at the Château D’Excideuil.

For more information see the gallery website for the exhibition: http://www.curwengallery.co.uk/gallery/richmond14/title.htm

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[1] Shadows Hold Their Breath, Reflection, Lake Rouffiac, France, Autumn, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 102 x 152cm

[2] Agrigento, Sicily, 2013, acrylic and lava sand on canvas, 66 x 82cm

Cass Art Interview with Robin Richmond- Currently showing at Curwen Gallery

Interview with Georgia Stephenson

Robin Richmond has been described as ‘one of the finest painters working in Britain today’, and we can see why. Her evocative studies are produced in the natural environment, and seek to document the sense of place rather than making a literal translation. Born in Philadelphia, raised in old Rome, student at Chelsea College of Art in the swinging sixties and now with her largest show to date at the Curwen & New Academy Gallery on the way, the artistic journey of Robin Richmond is one we’re eager to find out more about…

Can you tell us a little about how you became a landscape painter?

I became a landscape painter in 1985 when I had a visiting professorship at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I had previously been a very rigorously figurative portrait painter having grown up in Rome and schooled in Renaissance painting (which is why I did a masters in the History of Art and later wrote art history books) but being exposed to California light and the huge skies of the deserts of Arizona, Nevada and Utah changed me forever.

In 1989 I bought a house in the middle of nowhere in rural South-western France and this became my main studio. The landscape surrounding my French home has become my chief subject. The lake at the bottom of my fielding all seasons and weathers; the molten skies; the furze of trees; the horizon; these are all my subjects. I also travel a lot and this new show contains paintings of Sicily, Tuscany and Umbria.

My work is not transcriptive but evocative. I consider myself to be figurative but am often called abstract. I am not sure what this means....

You paint with a mix of oil and acrylic; do you have a special technique for blending the two? What’s your process like?

 

I became allergic to turpentine after using it for 35 years (my doctor says this is not uncommon!) and as a result began to experiment with acrylics. I was devastated at this development, but over time discovered Golden Acrylics, stocked now by my wonderful branch of Cass Art.

 My London studio is in Islington and I used to traipse down to Charing Cross but now just hop on the bus to Cass Art's flagship store. Very frequently! I love it - such helpful staff and such good materials. My daughter shops there all the way from the South of France, and can’t wait until she can shop online to be delivered there! Lots of my artist friends in France will be thrilled too.

I am trying to use oil again sparingly but as I use my hands a lot I have to use rubber gloves which feels too clinical to me. I like getting my hands dirty and have permanently colourful finger nails, no matter how hard I try.  I am starting again to put glazes of oil over acrylic layers. My work is a matter of many glazes and Golden is so good it mimics oils but without the long drying period and it uses water of course.

Can you tell us a little about your upcoming exhibition ‘On Solitary Fields’?

The new show is about remembering landscape and recreating it in the mind and in the studio with all the vagueness this entails. The Harvard neuroscientist Patrick Cavanagh says;" our visual system reflexively fills in our expressions and mood...going deeper into our mental state than any fully explicit painting could."

I could not put it better. I am interested in emotion and in getting that part of my viewers' mind to participate in the act of looking at my work.

What would your advice be to those who’d are curious but a little uncertain about trying landscape painting?

Landscape painting is as easy or difficult as you want to make it. I take students out into the fields and they start off daunted and scared of all the beauty. But just allowing the mind to run free and slosh colour around is an amazing process. Landscape is easier to paint than people. It doesn't talk back and has no ego!

On Solitary Fields will be on display from 6th-19th March 2014 at the Curwen & New Academy Gallery in Central London. Visit the gallery website for more details on the show.