Recent Paintings
The Cross Gallery – January 2004
Dublin, Ireland
The unconventionality and ingenuity of Rebecca Peart’s
coloured palette feels so familiar that it’s tempting
to give credit to nature, rather than the artist. The work
itself has such a primal presence that it conjures multiple
associations with images
of snowdrops, grasses, water, landscapes and more. In fact
the canvases themselves appear to be organic forms with
a minimalist purity enticing and stimulating every human
sense, seducing the viewer to look..... Unlike previous
work these new paintings from Peart facilitate no representational
images and are decidedly abstract in their roots.
The relationship between whole and empty parts has been
primary to Peart for many years and these paintings echo
this in style and layout. Peart, sometimes choosing to offset
delicate compositions with large square or rectangular solid
opaque masses, which appear to divide and subdivide the
surface image on each canvas.
The process of ‘making’ these paintings is revealed
through the visible expressionist brush strokes, which rest
on the surface of each canvas. The brush strokes and an
insistently translucent colouration is the product of overlaying
paint with mat varnishes in pink, violet, acid green, yellow
and blue. Peart uses a mix of gels with oil paint, which
is laid on in wet strokes so that the pigment pools at the
edge of each mark. Square and rectangular canvases are interrupted
by sections of white over painting, whilst brushy red marks
and grey and peach appear on others. This process of painting
has resulted in a new body of work from Rebecca Peart, which
is simultaneously solid and delicate in its composition,
going far beyond just aesthetic sensation.
Jane Byrne
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