Robin Richmond: Reviews

REVIEWS

Selected critical comment

PAINTING

Stones of the Sky, Curwen and New Academy 2010

The title comes from Pablo Neruda’s “Las Piedras del Cielo”, whose lines – “uninhabited poems, stretched between sky and autumn/ without people” – marvellously describe Robin Richmond’s lyrical semi-abstract empty landscapes. Richmond has always stepped the tightrope between abstraction and figuration; her recent work has new gravitas and accomplished, confident simplification. Leathery, dense surfaces are built up, erased, rebuilt; horizontal bands of resonant colour are pierced with light whose variations demonstrate intense painterly responses to place and time: watery reflections in “Guidecca from the Zattere (Night)”, muted purple twilight in “Solent (England)”, light penetrating heavy skies – “Waves”, “Glimpse of Sun” – in an acrid yellow/ turquoise Oslo cycle, a homage to Munch.

Jackie Wullschlager. Financial Times, Life and Arts, p.19. March 2010

Arguably Robin Richmond’s most single-minded exhibition, Stones of the Sky draws on her enormous expertise as a painter of nature, to show her at her most elemental. Richmond’s influences will speak fro themselves, but forget that: this collection is a tour de force, in which the sights and scents of existence, the real essences, atmosphere, the seasons and many other areas of sensory perception have their collars felt, in splendidly evanescent visions of land and water. Richmond’s habitual attentiveness to tone and palette is prominent, to magical effect.

Julian Freeman, Galleries, March 2010

American artist Robin Richmond's landscapes explore Pablo Neruda's poems Las Piedras del Cielo (Stones of the Sky). "...stretched between sky and autumn, without people...for a moment I want no one in my poetry..." Robin explains, "Many of the titles of my paintings are drawn from these word landscapes." Richmond is particularly powerful, painting space and atmosphere through a meditative sense of drama and calm sensuality. Underneath oil and acrylic glazes, marks and shapes read as breathtaking landscapes towards Rothko's depth of colour, light and texture, with the St. Ives artists' blending of figurative landscape with abstraction.

Estelle Lovatt, The American, March 2010

In three-dimensional reality, the canvas is just that – a piece of cloth stretched over wooden supports with a bit of colour on the front. But in the moment of contemplation, the sensations received by our eye and brain come together to make an “ideal” space, something the artist and we have made together, through the exercise of our senses, our conscious and unconscious thought. We make a journey from the real to the ideal and back to the real, without even being aware of it, as we do so often in ordinary life. The joy, indeed the magic of art, is that we are gently taken along this road again and again, discovering new excitement and pleasure along the way. The richness of this experience is enhanced because we have before us both the present and the past, ourselves and the other of ourselves – the artist’s own sensation and knowledge, amplified and given resonance by the movement of history.
In this process, Robin Richmond exercises her combination of direct observation and visual memory to great effect. She succeeds in fixing that unique moment – a wintry sunrise, windswept grasses in a fiery field, the crash of a wave, a moonlit lagoon. This is why these recent works are so intriguing and gratifying. Often they radiate a calm beauty, as in Before the Snow (France). Two watercolours, Heart of Sky – Water and From the Crevice to the Road (France), capture the subtle effects of light as an evanescent layering of smoky whites, aquas, greys and pinks.
Sometimes, as in Looking for Light (Gernika, Spain), you move from the surface texture to come up against a wall and simply enjoy the play of violets, reds, blues and greys on the surface. In others, like Endless Earthen Sky II (France), the dampness of dark soil and hint of water, touches of russet and oxblood, the suggestion of shrubs and stalks pulls you down into the earth. Stones of the Sky, named after a poem by her beloved Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, mines the vein of landscape abstraction more deeply. The compositions of these paintings are usually simple. Sky above; land or sea below. Or rather, our eyes and mind interpret the subtly modulated colours, textures and planes as landscapes and seascapes, helped along by the titles, often drawn from Neruda’s poem cycle.

Corinna Lotz, A World to Win, March 2010

Landscape Mysteries, Curwen and New Academy 2008

The borderline between figuration and abstraction has fascinated artists and those who look at what they do since the beginning of creative activity. The figure and its ground can be viewed as the mental paths by which we explore and appreciate the diverse nature of the world around us. The eye and the mind are exercised by such journeys from the facts of sensation to the realm of knowledge and memory - and outwards again to the living movement of nature. Whether a mark, a shape or a brushstroke defines something particular may depend on where we are located, the mood we are in, what we have experienced, How do marks shape things? How do we interpret them? When does a mark start to form a recognisable, readable landscape? These questions, and others are posed by Robin Richmond's 'Landscape Mysteries' at Curwen & New Academy (to 23 February).

Richmond describes her own movement between figuration and abstraction as "teetering on the edge". Since her last London show she has lost the fear of falling off as she unexpectedly found the confidence to kick away the props of narrative and venture forth while experimenting with acrylics and oil glazes. The Weight of Light, Shallows and The Sky for a Roof, The Earth for a Bed, are empty of specifics and yet they arouse a strong sense of place. Transitions between the elements - earth, fire, ocean and mist - are suggested by texture, "mixing memory with desire" to use T.S.Eliot's words. There is a debt to Mark Rothko's feathery colour bleeds, simple forms and sombre symmetries but the are all transformed by the use of oil glazes, sand, clay and encaustic, the ecstatic evocation of sea-swells and sprays, watery moors and mists opening up a quite new territory.

Robin Richmond by Corinna Lotz. Galleries, February 2008, p.11.

"Landscape Mysteries will be Robin Richmond’s 24th one woman show and her 6th with Curwen and New Academy Gallery. The inspiration for these new paintings is strongly rooted in landscape and yet demonstrates a distinct loosening in her imagery and formal handling of the paint since previous works. A rich depth of colour, light and texture within the work creates a powerful and atmospheric sense of space, within which the viewer can find their own meaning. Richmond says “A seam in the painting might be a horizon or just a beautiful, fizzing line.” She notes that there has been a technical and emotional change in the paintings and that “The paintings are less about telling the viewer a story - my story - than loosening the narrative shackles and letting you, the viewer, free inside the space I have made.”

In the early part of her international career Robin Richmond was a noted portraitist and her paintings focussed on the scrutiny of the “real”, celebrating the observed; whether in human, animal or landscape form. The figurative element was central and highly emphasised, with a strong narrative. Gradually, over the last 20 years, a gradual shift in focus and emphasis has been palpable in the paintings with a less constrained handling of her main subject - a study of Nature in all her glorious manifestations; meteorological, archaeological, geological, and historical. Richmond’s work has long teetered on the edge of abstraction and transcription, gaining power from this very rich internal tension, and giving free reign to her celebration of colour and texture, but this show marks an important shift in mood.

Galleries Magazine. Press release January 2008

Earlier Reviews

"Like the St Ives artists (with whom she is often compared), Richmond finds her response to painting extremely sensory. "There is something about the surface of a painting that I can either warm to or feel nauseated by." Richmond encouraged me to feel her pictures, allowing my fingers to trace the paths where colours mingle and separate and the gummy edges of different glazes stew together. Richmond says the best painting is the most direct. "Good pictures narrate, at their heart, a fundamental contrast, such as light versus dark, or cool versus warm. For me the contrast is between rough and smooth." The key ingredient to Richmond's tactile surfaces is paper. "It counteracts that slightly unctuous quality to oils and gives the picture texture and sensuality....most of the paper I make myself".

Featured Interview Spirit of Place with Will Barrett, Artists and
Illustrators, May 2007

“Observe the layered combinations of pensiveness, intuition and calm observation in Robin Richmond’s paintings of the Dordogne. The weather will have an impact on anything, and especially the eye-to-brain-to-hand appearance or mood of a painting, whether it’s a representation of a given place, or an artwork in a specific setting, or any image of the world observed and taken from a machine in flight. More important, ideas like this go a long way to establish individual and collective meanings of the terms such as ‘the British landscape’….. Intuitive spiritual imagery and energy can rack up in abstract work, as gestural brushwork with clear signs and signifiers, like those of Alan Davie: or of mixed media mark-making, as in some of Lanyon’s constructions, or in a younger generation of artists such as Hughie O’ Donohue, Kjell Torriset or Robin Richmond: three very different artists capable of major physical or intellectual relocation, plus the ability to allow the most elusive of spiritual and spatial possibilities to gain or decline with meaning within their respective works. Interestingly, all use art history, and the art of the past, to seek new and unrelated responses to the present. All have recent work that reflects ideas and sensations that are both abstract and concrete; Richmond’s canvases These Are the Rules are remarkable examples of challenging paintings that ask as much about text and meanings in spiritual terms as they deliver.”

Julian Freeman British Art, Southbank Publishing 2006

“remarkable (pictures) by a dramatic painter with a powerful story to tell.”

Kate Kellaway The Observer 2006

“Robin’s art has made the difficult leap out from the interior landscape, and her work succeeds in expressing the exterior representation of the internal, mental state.”

Sophie Van Thong, Art à Londres October 2005

“ … the experience (is) that of entering a gloomily lit church to discover a luminous fresco lurking in a corner chapel…. And gives the viewer the magical feeling of making a fleeting, momentary discovery… the biggest find …seems to be the sensibility she picked up from her decades in England. Her spatial and chromatic ambiguities are redolent of the St. Ives artists and their romantic fusion of landscape and abstraction.”

David Cohen, The New York Sun, 2004

“Given the range and diversity of the works in this show, Richmond is pleased the gallery is showing (the paintings of Mexico, Italy and France) all together. Given the range and diversity of the artist, they could do no less.”

Laura Gascoigne, Galleries, 2002

“These are complex works and while the landscapes confirm Richmond’s powers as a colourist they also reveal other concerns…. The large Mexican watercolour “Burnished Day” is the undoubted pièce de resistance. As if through stained glass, colour and structure combine to present a glowing patchwork of mountain and valley, cave and tree, ovoid and triangle. Overall is the sense of affirmation of life’s rich pattern, past, present and continuing.”

“The whole puts me in mind both of quattrocento vistas and of cubist preoccupations with time. This seems to prefigure an extremely interesting area, so that already while enjoying the present show one looks forward to the next.”

“Deeply affirmative, almost metaphysical impact. This self-possession is transfigured into an awesome monumental presence.”

Jane Norrie Art Review 1987/1989/1992

“Robin Richmond’s portraits penetrate the clichés of toughness to lay bare the pain and fear of the sensitive modern male. Men who have seen these paintings…. have been moved by the compassion.”

Caroline Tisdall, The Guardian 1980

BOOKS
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Michelangelo and the Creation of the Sistine Chapel, Random House 1992

“This book is much more important than its unpretentious text might suggest. Recommended.”

Graham Hughes, Art Review 1992

“Lovers of art will welcome this superb analysis of one of the world’s great masterpieces.”

The Arts 1992

“I congratulate you. I am humbled by the magnitude of the task.”

Sir Ernst Gombrich in a personal letter, 1992

“Subtly blends information with a light conversational tone.”

The Good Book Guide

The Magic Flute , Faber 1990,
Introducing Michelangelo, Little Brown 1992
Story in a Picture Vols 1 and II, Ideals 1995

“The magical atmosphere is superbly captured in these unique paintings.”

Pick of the Best Children’s Books 1990

“A wondrous slim volume that deserves a place in every child’s library.”

Washington Times 1992

“The book is to be highly recommended for its striking design and lucid text.”

The Lady 1992

“The attractiveness of the story telling helps demystify an art world too often made holier than thou.”

Washington Times 1995

“The colorful text allows the reader to visualize the paintings even with their eyes closed.”

Children’s Bookwatch 1995