| Rosemary Holcroft
'Soundings'
Combine paintings and assemblages
Thur 8th to Wed 28th November 2007
“Produced over the past four years the works in this exhibition are the result of picking up the paintbrush after a 25 year layoff. Exploring philosophical themes, they sidestep our usual referential yardstick. Applied logic no longer holds true as metaphor overlaps symbol, geometry interweaves with substance. We follow inferences through a densely compressed world of suspended statements, an exacting interplay of cross-references full of measured tension. Small in scale they are large in meaning.
Rosemary flies in the face of current artistic trends (painting is dead?); neither does she pander to the over-subscribed ‘Pembrokeshire landscape industry’.
Nevertheless some of these paintings retain a prevailing sense of narrative as in ‘Annunciation II’. A psychological drama is indicated even if synthetically. Inclusion of a ‘found object’ rescued from the ashes, occupies the bottom left. Here, an undulating melded form, a barely recognisable shape, still born from loneliness and silence, occupies a dark and secret space, isolated by a vertical tubular form from the world of sunlight beyond. To the right an apparitional space is brightly lit to the point of dissolving in bliss, beckons this mortal being, a crucible for the spirit. ‘The still point of the turning world’ T.S. Eliot.
Other works make sideways references to ‘Crossing the Water’ (St. Christopher) and ‘Parts of Speech’ (St. Anthony) as well as ‘The Garden” series (Eden)
Using clotted pigments, objets trouvés, glazed washes, scraps of script, patches and dots of colour, the searching line, - all obey a magical whole yet defy conscious analysis.
Back in the mid 70’s I was part of a group tutorial with Professor Peter de Francia, the Head of Painting at the Royal College of Art, in which he happened to make a derogatory remark that Rosemary Holcroft’s works reminded him of love letters. A number of us defended the tenacity of Rosemary’s work and disagreed. Over the intervening years, she has remained loyal, developing her language, and this show illustrates the joy of making art.
Oh Peter, if you are listening, how wrong you were.”
© Mike Holcroft - October 2007
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