Heather Robinson
My painting practice is an exploration of surfaces through pattern, color, and texture. I have an attraction to bright, colorful, decorated objects, an orderly mind, a love for the grid and a strong schooling to mistrust the superficial. These contradictory urges come together in my paintings.
Each painting has multiple layers of color and pattern with each layer revealing a new level of space. Starting with a piece of fabric at the base and adding elements both rigid and spontaneous, I build up a rich surface with contrasting components. The result is, in a sense, a representation of my mental state while creating - a push and pull between order and disorder, and space and time.
My series “Pattern Seeking” is about optimism in the face of evidence to the contrary. In an increasingly chaotic and uncertain time, I paint to evoke positive emotions, even if I’m not always feeling them myself. The repeating textile patterns that serve as my inspiration are meditative and soothing in their regularity, a reminder of threads winding through history and my tiny place in the world. Striving to create a harmonious whole and a beautiful finished object, putting down colors and patterns that interact with and satisfyingly weave into each other - this all affects me for the better, as I hope it affects the viewer.
