brigid rose

paintings and pictures

The paintings and drawings displayed here give an overview of the preoccupations I have as an artist. A deeper interest for me in creating artwork is in the production of pattern, whether done free-hand or with the use of a spirograph. I am drawn to the idea of the perfect geometrical shape - as if there was a certain symbol or code that, like a mathematical formula, could encompass the entire nature of life. The patterns made by spiralling D.N.A, by charts that map long and short-wave radio frequencies, by weather fronts, by water crystals in snow flakes, by minute animal footprints in sand; these are the shapes and patterns that inspire my work. Pattern is used in the pictures to symbolize atoms in a human body, petals encircling the centre of a flower, or solar systems seen from outer space - paths of planets orbiting a central sun.

  Through my artwork I am trying to find a way to represent what is both fundamental and miraculous about life as we live it. This attempt finds expression in pictures of hardy plants as they find a way to grow in seemingly barren and unforgiving environments; the plants grow spikes and thorns in the process of survival but nevertheless manage to thrive. I'm intrigued by the way nature finds a way to endure even in deserts or in places with no light or warmth - hence the 'Plants on Mars' series of paintings and drawings.

  This attempt to express something both fundamental and miraculous also finds an outlet in the 'Ecstatic Atommed Human' series of pictures. I am fascinated with the 'life' in organic things; the way that thousands of processes take place simultaneously inside our bodies - the workings of the nervous system, the respiratory system, the endocrine system etc - all this supporting us physically without our minds needing to orchestrate any of it. In the pictures, the human body hums ecstatically with life as its atoms spin with electrons, creating spirographic patterns of perfect symmetry.

  I am also interested in the aspirational quality of life; the way plants aspire towards the sun that sustains them, the way humans build towers into the sky as though aspiring to transcend gravity altogether, even the way the Earth continues through aeons to orbit the Sun as if on some unfathomable cyclic journey. In the 'Tower Series' of paintings massive man-made constructions reach upwards to the sky whilst behind them, far-off moons and planets silently continue to rise and set in the vast back-drop of the Universe.

  As my main fascination is with pattern, I'm not particularly concerned with creating the appearance of depth in the work. I'm interested in the Eastern philosophical concept that the world of form is illusory and is supported by one immanent reality. The surface plane in my pictures, therefore, is facade-like, stressing the two-dimensionality of the drawing or painting; like a stage-set constructed in a theatre. The theatre is a facsimile of life rather than the actual reality.

  All the works are on paper. Some are executed with oil pastel alone whilst others use a mixture of media. A wax resist method is used frequently. Currently I am experimenting with wax rubbings taken from ‘invisible’ spirograph patterns which have been indented into paper using worn-out pen nibs. Rubbings are taken and then overlaid with inks.