PFG Stuart Robertson July 2021

PIERS FEETHAM GALLERY

STUART ROBERTSON A SILVER LINING RECENT PAINTINGS

14 - 31 July 2021

Paris Opera House watercolour, silver leaf 23 x 33 cm

STUART ROBERTSON A SILVER LINING

It may seem surprising that Stuart Robertson's creativity during the last eighteen months should have conveyed so much vivid experience, given how dour and restrictive that year and a half has been. His indefatigable effort and artistic optimism, apparent in frequent Instagram postings, had begun to fascinate me early on in the first lockdown: there was unexpected imagery and there were very new ways of working.

The rock-solid architectural structure was there as always, but often transmuted into purely non-figurative forms.

These new compositions are marked by great emotional power; strong tonalities and strong drawing are the vehicles, but haunting associations are set up through the use of collage.

Perhaps the dark, even apocalyptic, messages we were hearing each day through the media have played their part but the fragments of printed matter in some of these works, matter often foreign in origin, make the images into capsules containing other times altogether. Stuart has said that he looked at artists to whom he had not paid much attention before. We didn't discuss them, but I sometimes remembered Schwitters, or Joseph Cornell and thought of that essential building of one creativity upon another. Standing on someone's shoulders, as it were.

Buildings are here, too; buildings which, some of them, have had their troubles: Wren churches in the City, Hawksmoor's at Spitalfields, Notre Dame de Paris.

The artist has said that Covid ''produced a strange opportunity for me in the studio to work on things I had been putting off '' and that he '' wanted to swim far from the shore this time''. And so a long period of consistent application ensued in which he did both these things. The range of techniques is new to me and I remember phone calls in which Stuart recommended all sorts of materials in combination, printing inks, gesso, liquid charcoal, silver leaf and more, and made me feel an irredeemable stick-in-the-mud. The enthusiasm and the drive to go further were palpable. Here, in this show, are the results.

Paul Newland RWS June 2021 Front page: Gutenberg’s Secret 3 charcoal, graphite, collage, silver leaf 14 x 11 cm

Alois Senefelder’s Notes 2 graphite, watercolour, collage 27 x 24 cm

Goethe & Runge’s Book charcoal, graphite, silver leaf, watercolour 19 x 58 cm

The European watercolour, collage 14 x 38 cm

Brutalist 4 charcoal, watercolour, silver leaf, graphite 24 x 24 cm

Daniel Hopfer's Notes 2 graphite, charcoal 22 x 23 cm

Louvre Bridge Entrance Ticket watercolour 29 x 36 cm

St Martin Ludgate

St Mary Somerset Tower

watercolour, collage 19 x 12 cm

watercolour, collage 19 x 12 cm

Filma silver leaf, collage 22 x 21 cm

Frank Lloyd Wright 1 charcoal, graphite, silver leaf 18 x 18 cm

Still Life with Nine Pots oil 29 x 40 cm

Still Life with White Vase oil 20 x 25 cm

Marble Arch watercolour 25 x 33 cm

Notre Dame, Paris 3 watercolour 87 x 51 cm

Blast 1 gold leaf, ink, graphite 14 x 37 cm

Blast 2 silver leaf, ink, graphite 14 x 37 cm

Travelling Library 4

Travelling Library 5

old wooden type, collage 12 x 7 cm

old wooden type, collage 12 x 7 cm

London Café 1 watercolour, collage 14 x 9 cm