| Rebecca Partridge |
 There are many ideas and discussions around this thing we call ‘abstract painting’, is it an abstraction; a distillation of something we see externally, or could it come from some other place beyond our common understanding? For me Rothko put it most succinctly when he described his work as ‘the simple expression of the complex thought’. Painting can embody experience that is beyond language as the activity of making and viewing is, if to different degrees, inherently visceral. The question of what abstract painting is and how it takes on meaning is central to the development of this work. Influences span cultures and millennia, from prehistoric cave drawings, religious architecture across the globe, Indian mandalas, stained glass and of course the development of our own rich history of abstract painting in the west. These paintings are the product of an ongoing archaeological dig into the roots of abstraction and our never failing compulsion to create and regard patterns, geometries and illusionary spaces. They are a study of deeper structures which appear in the natural world on both micro and macro levels, but most importantly, as a painter, they are explorations into visual experiences which appear to be written into our neurological make up. Our knowledge of the brain has grown exponentially over the past twenty years with the development of brain imaging techniques used within neuroscience. The concept of ‘Form Constants’ coined by Heinrich Kluver in the 1970’s, is fast becoming standard; an alphabet of geometric forms including grids, honeycombs, concentric circles, spider webs, lattices which appear as internal visual experience in response to a number of conditions (epilepsy, migraine, synaesthesia, to name a few). Kluver’s research into persistent visual imagery also identified the common experience of light and movement, tunnel imagery and a clear central vortex, all of which are common themes connecting the span of religious art. It appears to be no coincidence that the conditions associated with these internal visual experiences (temporal lobe epilepsy is the most explicit example) are in many cases also associated with experiences of altered or mystical states. It follows when looking back at our own art history that generations of artists have used these abstract systems as a vehicle for spiritual notions. Kandinsky, famously synaesthesic, wrote at length about the relationships between abstract form, colour and the spiritual. Barnet Newman’s minimal geometries, which lead us into the vast illusory space of the colour field, not only physically indicate otherness but were often titled from the mystical text, the Kabala. The Indian Yantra, a design of concentric circles within squares is a powerful tool for the meditator to enter a transcendent state. There exists, it seems, inexhaustible examples of this relationship, but does the peeling back of contexts and histories aid our understanding? The fear would be that of reducing abstraction to a neurological model. It is not my intention to over simplify and attempt to strip bare what will always be an allusive, and consequently such a seductive activity. I attempt instead to reaffirm a history; by strengthening the roots the branches flourish. My intention when making a painting is unashamedly optimistic, drawing up something universal, ancient and living, energetic and expansive. Within the plethora of ideas and attitudes around contemporary abstract painting I hope only to continue the age-old relationship of the abstract as a visual expression of something greater, dynamic and expansive, with new awareness of what that means now. Rebecca Partridge 2007 |