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