Featured Women Artists | Q&A: Carol Robertson
For March 2020 we are marking a special feature to highlight some of the inspiring work produced in collaboration with Women in the Studio. A specially curated line up of prints demonstrate the diversity of mark-making and effects that can be achieved through printmaking. These artists, in collaboration with the studio, have made works that span both figuration and abstraction. Click the link below to view.
Karina Sawyer speaks to the London-based painter about her practice and the application to printmaking with Kip and the Studio.
Nominating her favourite women artists, Robertson was quick to share with me her selection of ‘fellow females’. She revealed her appreciation of clarity and spiritual existence in the work of Agnes Martin, courage and complexity in that of Bridget Riley and the trail-blazing attitude of Eva Hesse. This praise for femininity in minimalism, abstraction and sculpture also traversed into the subtle reflections of colour found in the work of Ann Veronica Janssens - a recently discovered favourite of Robertson.
In order to really observe an artist’s work takes an inside look - an honour to the background, inspiration and process involved. In reference to the aforementioned artists, Robertson’s work challenges our perceptions with structured concentric rings and facets which bring our world of ‘chaos’ into atmospheric and calming plains of colour and space.
Carol Robertson has made prints with the Studio since 2011, most recently on a series of monoprints titled Free Fall in 2018. With her prints often preceding a new series of paintings, the artist establishes the connection and influence printmaking has on her subsequent work.
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Layers building on a monoprint from the series Crossover (2012)
Karina Sawyer: Can you tell me a little about how your career began? Where do you feel your creativity has its roots?
Carol Robertson: I always wanted to be an artist. I never had any doubts about going to art school or to making a life-long commitment to art. I feel incredibly lucky to have a vocation that never fails to absorb me. As a child I travelled abroad a lot with my family and seeing first hand the cultural identity of different countries was almost certainly an early influence. My mother always encouraged me to draw and paint... she inspired me to be creative, to invent, to use my imagination.
“I am still powerfully influenced by nature and the environment.”
KS: Are there similarities to your early career work - say during you time at art school - that you can see connecting to your current practice? How has your practice shifted and is there anything you can consider as influencing this development?
CR: I recognised my instinct to make abstract paintings early on, but was influenced by a freeform style that didn’t use rulers or compasses. I made multi coloured paintings with a Kandinsky-esque feel, drawing my inspiration from landscape. There is little visible connection now to those early paintings, but I am still powerfully influenced by nature and the environment.
The move towards measured geometry and reductive style evolved gradually over 10 years or so. In my late 20’s I married artist Trevor Sutton, who introduced me to artist-friends who had an enormous influence, particularly Roger Ackling, Richard Long, Sean Scully, Catherine Lee, Alan Charlton, Lesley Foxcroft, Prunella Clough, to name but a few.
Overseeing of colour swatches. Copán monoprints, 2015
Colour is a vital key: like music it works fast, unlocking our emotions and transporting us to a different mindset or headspace or whatever one calls that ‘place where we go’. ”
KS: I can see the influence of the artists you mentioned in their architectural and linear approach to abstraction. The formality of the geometric forms in your work enables you to focus your attention on shape, colour, symmetry and asymmetry. Do you have any significant inspiration for these particular elements?
CR: The metamorphosis towards a more minimal non-figurative outlook was completed during a residency at the British School of Rome. There I was surrounded by extraordinary architectural form and detail that immediately fed into my work. Many of my early circle paintings and drawings were made there. I wanted to make work that simplified everything I was seeing and feeling. Pulling the outside in.
Geometry takes the chaos out of too much choice. It frees me to interpret my senses, frees me to access a multi-dimensional world.
I love colour. For me it’s the most subjective and intuitive element in my work, highly personal and associative. Colour is a vital key: like music it works fast, unlocking our emotions and transporting us to a different mindset or headspace or whatever one calls that ‘place where we go’.
It’s impossible to single out things that inspire me because every day things get stored away in my head that might be useful or significant in the creative process.
However, there are times and places when that attention, that focus, is heightened. My studio is the first example: a solitary safe haven where I slow down, stop being distracted, listen to my thoughts, refine my ideas. By contrast, another instance is when I’m travelling: the differences, the unfamiliar, the break in routine can make me hyper-aware. I like to work on residences where I get back in touch with nature, be more aware of the Circadian rhythm, look at the night sky... things that often get lost living in London.
Edzná monoprints (2014)
KS: A particular trip to Central America informed the titles in your monoprints Edzná (2014) and Copán (2015). The radiating discs are distinctively celestial and are a visual parallel to the Mayan calendars. Its clear location and environment relate heavily to your work.
CR: Location and environment are very important, a vital creative link. The prints you mention were made as a result of an epic journey that started in southern Mexico, taking me on to Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. I was exploring Mayan culture, visiting archaeological sites, looking at artefacts and gaining an understanding of their spiritual world. Away from the key sites I was also taking in an explosion of colour, sights, sounds, scents, tastes, that were no less exciting and inspirational. Whilst on the move I couldn’t make work, other than taking photographs and making notes. I had no idea how all this information would feed into the work. That comes later, in a creative out-pouring of ideas back home.
“I wanted to make work that simplified everything I was seeing and feeling. Pulling the outside in.”
KS: Culminating these ideas onto canvas can typically go through many transitions in your studio. Working with a sense of flux and layering on your compositions can clearly relate to the process of printmaking. So, going from canvas to print, can you tell me how working with the medium of print differs from painting?
CR: A painting can take many months from conception to completion... it’s a slow private meditative ritual that can’t be hurried. There is no short cut for meticulously painting a series of circles. I use oil paint so drying times can be lengthy between layers. These days I might be working on two or three paintings at a time, no more.
Printmaking is totally different. Significantly, I’m working in collaboration not isolation. My output increases dramatically. I can make 50 images in a week that would take me years to explore in painting. There are of course rejects but multiple screens allow me to experiment with colour and overprinting at an insanely fast pace. I prefer to make mono prints for this reason, though I might select a favourite later on to edition, like Maya or Navajo. I learn by my mistakes, sometimes transforming a disaster into a success with a single overprint. I love this process, the immediacy of it.
Carol signing her series of monoprints Edzná (2014)
“Working with Kip makes it all happen. I couldn’t do it on my own.”
KS: You have made prints with the Studio on more than a few occasions, there must be something that draws you back! How does working in print feed back into your practice as a painter? What does the process of working collaboratively with Kip bring to your practice?
CR: Making prints always feeds my wider practice. Experimenting with multiple formations and colour variations provides a fantastic source. It’s an invaluable confidence-builder too, not least in having to make decisions quickly and publicly!
Working with Kip makes it all happen. I couldn’t do it on my own. This collaboration starts with trust and friendship. It’s significant that Kip is an artist as well as a master printmaker. He brings his expertise, his personality, his advice, his studio, into every part of a project. He is my facilitator, my visual and practical interpreter if you will. He takes my idea, makes transparencies, makes screens, sets up and registers every pull, every inking. He’s a genius at interpreting and mixing my colours. When printing begins it’s fast, physical and very intense. We both have to be at the top of our game, mindful of everything.
Carol Robertson & Kip Gresham with Copán monoprint, 2015
Contact us for more information on prints by Carol Robertson. Enquiries on editions can be made to info@theprintstudio.co.uk.
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