All painting is a journey along a line of pictures that started long ago in the past and stretches away into the invisible future. An artist travels a pathway and at various points will be distracted by the possibility of more interesting views to be discovered by changing course to head off down an alternative track in a slightly different forward direction. This new path may lead to a cliff face; possibly a river; maybe a vast orchard with succulent fruits growing wild on the trees: it is a journey of discovery.
Over the last year I have entered territory where the line has become far more predominant. The line as a two-dimensional form with width, length and colour. Or like a delicate construction. Or the ghosted silhouette of previous objects. On one side of the track the usually colourful landscape is muted and more serious. On the other side flowers and leaves have been replaced by banks of chalk where the sun reflects from coloured rocks and casts dark shadows across the chalk face.
Geoffrey Robinson, October 2012
Born 1945
Education
1961 Bournemouth School of Art
Solo & Two-Person Exhibitions
2012 Mullan Gallery, Belfast Solo
2012 Jenna Burlingham Fine Art, Kingsclere Solo
2011 Stour Gallery, Shipston on Stour
2011 Wren Gallery, Burford Solo
2011 Grapevine Gallery, Norwich Solo
2009 Mullan Gallery, Belfast Solo
2009 Burnham Grapevine, Burnham Market Solo
2008 Mullan Gallery, Belfast Solo
2008 Gallery De Novo, Dunedin, New Zealand
2008 Thompson’s Gallery, London Solo
2007 Stour Gallery, Shipston on Stour
2007 Grapevine Gallery, Norwich Solo
2006 Mullan Gallery, Belfast Solo
2006 Hampshire Arts, 12-month touring Solo
2005 Grapevine Gallery, Norwich Solo
2004 Bettles Gallery, Ringwood Solo
2004 Lena Boyle Fine Art, Chelsea
2004 Study Gallery, Poole Solo
2003 Mullan Gallery, Belfast Solo
2003 Lynne Strover Gallery, Cambridge
2002 King Alfred's College, Winchester Solo
2001 Cadogan Contemporary, Chelsea
1999 Cadogan Contemporary, Chelsea
1998 Bettles Gallery, Ringwood Solo
1997 Cadogan Contemporary, Chelsea
1995 Bettles Gallery, Ringwood Solo
1992 Bettles Gallery, Ringwood Solo
1991 Walford Mill, Wimborne Solo
Group Exhibitions
2012
Gallery De Novo, Dunedin, New Zealand
Artizan Editions, Affordable Art Fair, Battersea
Stour Gallery, Shipston on Stour
Market House Gallery, Marazion
Burnham Grapevine, Burnham Market
Wren Gallery, Burford
Mullan Gallery, Belfast
Jenna Burlingham Fine Art, Art Antiques, London
Josie Eastwood, Winchester
Sladers Yard, West Bay
Artizan Editions, Art on Paper Fair, RCA
2011
Wren Gallery – Edinburgh Art Fair
Fry Art Gallery Society – Saffron Walden
Wren Gallery – Cressing Antiques & Art Fair
Burnham Grapevine, Burnham Market
Wren Gallery, Burford
Lynne Strover Gallery, Fen Ditton
Wren Gallery – Affordable Art Fair Bristol
Wren Gallery – Chelsea Art Fair
Wren Gallery – Birmingham NEC
Artizan Editions – Art on Paper Fair, RCA
2010
Affordable Art Fair, Battersea – Lena Boyle
Burnham Grapevine, Burnham Market
Fry Art Gallery Society – Saffron Walden
Edinburgh Art Fair – Wren Gallery
The Northern Art Show, Harrogate – Wren Gallery
Thompson’s Gallery, London
Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour
Wren Gallery, Burford
Grapevine Gallery, Norwich
Burnham Grapevine, Burnham Market
Cambridge Art Fair, Wren Gallery
Mullan Gallery, Belfast
Affordable Art Fair, Bristol, Wren Gallery
Market House Gallery – Marazion
2009
Gallery De Novo, Dunedin, New Zealand
Wren Gallery, Burford
Lena Boyle Fine Art, London
Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour
Affordable Art Fair, Battersea – Lena Boyle
Burnham Grapevine, Burnham Market
Thompson’s Gallery, London
Mullan Gallery, Belfast
Katharine House Gallery, Marlborough
Artizan Editions – Art on Paper Fair, RA
Pelham House, Lewes – Artizan Editions (prints)
2008
Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour
Lena Boyle Fine Art, London
Affordable Art Fair, Battersea – Lena Boyle
Grapevine Gallery, Norwich
ArtLondon – Lena Boyle
Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour
Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour
Mullan Gallery, Belfast
Bettles Gallery, Ringwood
Innocent Fine Art, Bristol
Artizan Editions – Art on Paper Fair, RA
Burnham Grapevine, Burnham Market
Thompson’s Gallery, London
Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour (paintings)
2007
Fairfax Gallery, London
Mullan Gallery
Lynne Strover Gallery, Fenn Ditton, Cambridge
Grapevine Gallery, Norwich
Lena Boyle Fine Art, London, Affordable Art Fair
Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour (prints)
20/21 International Art Fair, London (paintings & prints)
Curwen & New Academy Gallery – (prints)
2006
Alpha House Gallery, Sherborne
Art on Paper Fair, RCA, London
Fairfax Galleries, Tunbridge Wells & London
Gallery De Novo, Dunedin, New Zealand
Grapevine Gallery, Norwich
Menier Chocolate Factory Gallery, London
New Ashgate Gallery, Farnham
Thompson's Gallery, London
2005
Affordable Art Fair, London - Lena Boyle
Belgrave Gallery, St Ives
Bristol Affordable Art Fair
Fairfax Galleries, Tunbridge Wells & London
Glasgow Art Fair
Highcliffe Castle
Josie Eastwood Fine Art, Winchester
Katherine House Gallery, Marlborough
Lena Boyle Fine Art, London
London Art Fair - Islington
Quay Arts, Newport
Salisbury Playhouse
St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, Lymington
University College Winchester - Art Loan
Wine Street Gallery, Devizes
2004
Ashurst, Morris, Crisp, London - Lena Boyle
Affordable Art Fair, London - Lena Boyle
Bettles Gallery, Ringood
Bournemouth University - Art Loan
Edgarmodern Contemporary Fine Art, Bath
Grapevine Gallery, Norwich
Innocent Fine Art, Bristol
Lynne Strover Gallery, Cambridge
Mullan Gallery, Belfast
Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour
St Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, Lymington
Selected Bibliography
2006 Peter Davies, St Ives Revisited,
Old Bakehouse Publications
2005 Peter Davies, St Ives Times & Echo
"Robinson, Nicholson, Macmiadhacháin
and Hunter at the Belgrave Gallery"
2004 Bournemouth University Art Loan
Collection catalogue
2003 Professor Alan Livingston - Principal,
Falmouth College of Arts
"New Work" exhibition text
2002 Vivienne Light FRSA "West Country
Painters" exhibition text
2000 Bournemouth University Art Loan
Collection catalogue
1999 George Chapman, TNT review London
1998 Jeremy Miles "A Real Capital Showing"
Evening Echo Bournemouth
1997 Lucinda Bredin review, Sunday Telegraph
Television
ITV Meridian -THE FRAME December 2004
Collections
Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum
St George's Healthcare NHS Trust
Royal Bournemouth Hospital
Lord David Puttnam CBE
George Michael
Quentin Willson
AUTHOR AND ART HISTORIAN PETER DAVIES WROTE
Geoffrey Robinson is an inventive image maker who, using still life as the main vehicle of expression, introduces imagination and a colourful verve into a well-trodden area of modern painting. The influence, or rather inspiration, of William Scott, Ben Nicholson and Mary Fedden is one reason for his recent success; but without his quite different innovations and interpretations the flattened perspectives and soft anglicised cubism of their work would result in no more than an appealing mannerism. He is unusual in moving from the abstract back towards decorative or mimetic imagery of an evocative or recognisable kind. "I am doing something akin to arranging found objects within a rectangle ... I never work my abstract composition back from a found collection of objects." The hard-edged reliefs that Robinson has made – ordered along intuitive rather than systematic or concrete lines – therefore provides an almost syntactic base. Like Helion and Leger in France or Nicholson and Caulfield in England Robinson then introduces imagery all the more sophisticated and cogent and stark within its abstract volume. Colour plays a primary visual role, single hues forming a situation where, as Vivienne Light described in 2002, "… areas of space between the objects are as important as the objects themselves.
However 'rococo' or decoratively intricate (the artist scratching, collaging, blotting or rubbing in simulated textures as part of the graphic repertoire) Robinson's still lifes are never hermetic self-concealed entities. They reach out visually into the viewer's space. The tactile surfaces frequently breathe with not just personal but wider symbolism.
From Robinson's brittle planes of pure colour, synthetic spaces and inscribed intricacies of surface detail there emerges the same love of everyday domestic objects and a similar contemplation of the play of natural light that held the attention of Grant, Bell and Fry two generations before.
Both from a practical and ideological standpoint Robinson works directly within the rich legacy of modernism, adapting and transforming images seen, imagined or recycled with graphic precision, intelligence and feeling for style. Perhaps the designer's natural inventiveness allows him to 'get inside' the work of revered masters like Nicholson or Scott, but once there his highly individual sense of colour and ability as he puts it "… to introduce convergences and little discoveries that are quite definitely me..." take over.
A Robinson is quite clearly and recognisably a Robinson and for those still not familiar with his work, his uncanny and almost idiosyncratic mix of styles – and within it of multifarious still life objects – will assuredly make its mark.
Peter Davies 2005
Peter Davies is the author of many authoritative books, including St Ives Revisited, After Trewyn (on St Ives Sculptors) and a forthcoming book on St Ives of the period 1975 – 2005.
Mullan Gallery www.mullangallery.com
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