Fiona Robinson
Profile/CV
Fiona Robinson is an artist based in Dorset. Her drawings and paintings are concerned with abstract investigations of landscape, memory and process. Her most recent work, Unstable Horizons, arose out of daily drawings of the rapidly changing light and weather on the horizon during a two-month Fellowship at the The Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Co. Mayo, Ireland. In 2007 she won the University of Bath Painting Prize and won third prize in the International Drawing Biennale in Melbourne Australia. In 2011 she won the Excellence in Drawing Prize at the Royal West of England Academy Open Exhibition in Bristol. She is represented by Masters and Pelavin, New York and Kelly Ross Fine Art, Dorset.
A line drawn on hot-press paper, rubbed until it fades and fuses with the surface. The bleeding of charcoal trapped and paled by layers of paint. I manipulate these processes until they produce marks of exquisite tension and great spatial depth. I make abstract interpretations of movement across terrain and through interior spaces. My work is an enquiry into process, memory and repetition.
What defines drawing: intention, format, support? Works in sketchbooks tend to be seen as drawings because they are investigative; primary sources; studies for something else; therefore apparently unfinished, ephemeral, work in progress. They are part of a journey towards another state of being.
I am interested in the point at which painting and drawing meet. Canvas suggests painting. The 'Journey Sequence Paintings and Circular Walk Drawings' made between 2005 - 2009 address the issue of the nature of drawing and consider the moment when a drawing stops being about drawing and starts being about painting. In my current work I take these ideas further with insistent repetitive, destabilised charcoal lines slashing across the surface of painted canvas. They are undoubtedly paintings. The deliberately painterly use of paint, which contributes to the sense of instability, creates a surface which makes them paintings rather than drawings. However they retain a significant element of drawing. 'Unstable Horizons' is an investigation into instability, of line, of surface, of life. A fascination with what happens when apparently straight lines bend. These drawings and paintings are the result of experiences and visual investigations during two residencies in Ireland in 2010.
The primary focus of my practice is drawing regardless of what surface I choose to work on. My drawings and paintings begin with investigative observational drawing in sketchbooks, which is then developed through further drawing and often, but not always, followed through onto canvas. I work in charcoal, graphite and oil on canvas, the drawn line being a significant part of the image. The landscape often provides the impetus for work which explores my relationship with place, but the simplest starting point, a distant horizon, a winter tree, a crack in the pavement, a line, will spark memories or connections from which I will construct a meditative space. My work is currently on show in A Field Guide to getting Lost at the Pelavin Gallery in NYC and three pieces have been selected for The Frost Project at the Frost Museum in Miami.
Website www.fionarobinson.com
