SECONDSKIN

Exhibition opening: Rosalind Porter 09.12.2011 

in the Artroom Gallery, Rosenstraße, Fürth, Germany.

Excerpts from the introductional speech by Uwe Schein

Rosalind Porter

……Rosalind Porter is for me an insider’s tip in the regional art scene. For some she has a biography to be envied. Her father, a graduate from the Royal College of Art in London where Rosalind Porter was born, encouraged his daughter’s musical and artistic talents, both of which became apparent at an early age.

At eighteen years old, she decided to study the cello - in London, Paris and Detmold (Germany). She then concertised as a professional musician in several European countries and was principal cellist in various German symphony orchestras.

Parallel to music, she worked steadily and ambitiously in visual arts.

In Rosalind Porter’s catalogue, I found a statement which gave cause for reflection:

“During all my earlier performances and concerts, I never realised, thank God, that my cello-playing had each time been lost to the universe, for ever. That’s why I always value so much the “stayingness” in my paintings.”

This statement characterises the boundaries between music and the visual arts, boundaries of which one can only be conscious, if there is an inclination to overcome them. Music and art are not contradictions for Rosalind Porter; on the contrary, they represent a challenge. The characteristics common to both these artistic disciplines become united in this single artist, resounding in an exhaustion of her own distinct innate synergies.

Sound in music does not stand in opposition to the light and colour tonality of painting and this definitely applies to Rosalind Porter’s work. Here, we find a strong sensibility of colour and also something which is seldom so sensually and palpably conjured onto the canvas in contemporary painting these days; the virtuosity of light.

….I am quite convinced, that in her paintings Rosalind Porter commandingly lives out a concert of colours and light to the full, more or less as a logical consequence of her musicality and thus being able to reach new summits.

….No matter how much the onlooker either engages with her painting or perhaps tries to elude their influence, from the first moment of perception a change in his awareness has already taken place.

Rosalind Porter strives for this impact and with her very sensual way of painting she creates links to our seemingly lost and purely natural world.

A wonderful example of this is the painting called “Behind Pendle Hill”. In this landscape, we reverberate everything she has passionately brought to canvas and our own submerged encounters in nature are revived. With seemilbgly incredible facility, the artist shows us nature’s dramatic allure.

……. In some of Rosalind Porter’s landscapes, we can detect shadowy human silhouettes which are intended to remind us of our own interrelation within nature. The artist touches aptly here on a dilemma. The larger part of humanity has dug itself into a world of modern technology and supposedly perfectly equipped civilisation. One becomes conscious of being dependent on nature only after it starts to go wrong; we are confronted with the chaotic aftermath of environmental catastrophes. Thanks to an incredible arrogance, we comprehend the situation only if we ourselves are personally affected by it.

The painting “Embedded” could be easily misunderstood if it were to be regarded simply as an aestheticising landscape composition. Rosalind Porter’s works are however both warning and indication, in respect of the above mentioned complex and  it is precisely because of that sensual moment which has invariably played a prominent role in landscape painting.  Because we are about to stamp out the remaining flecks of virginal unspoiled natural environment, painting does indeed have the task of evoking in people a yearning for elemental landscape and of urging us to protect the same.

This is why we need the landscape painting offered by Rosalind Porter.

They are inscapes however, undermined with disturbances.

In these paintings, the viewer encounters impurities which are quasi figments of the mind. They intervene and irritate our vision like a distant threat. It has to do with the artistic measures taken by this highly sensitive artist in order to help generate and magnify the brisance in our situation.

In this respect, Rosalind Porter breaks away from romanticised maudlin sentimentality yet to be found in today’s landscape painting. It is the elementary questions in life, which become manifested in Rosalind Porter’s work, no more and no less, though not spectacularly but rather unimposingly transported. She wants the “signs” to be noticed and registered.

In Rosalind Porter’s series on paper “Torn”, she points explicitly at environmental destruction, the paper’s surface being intentionally damaged, ….. I encountered this interesting technique for the first time in her work.

Rosalind Porter is also concerned with people and animals in her painting.

Here, she is interested in their interrelationships and dependencies on each other. Just as it is important for her to point out our basic relationship to earth, it is likewise her desire to illustrate the ties between humans and animals.

…….Particularly in her paintings of children, she is intent on depicting vulnerability as well as the need for security, which is after all essentially a latent longing in everyone.

In her painting “Intimacy”, Rosalind Porter (a rider) gives a hint of our mutual dependency as horse and rider stare fixedly at each other. The rider relies on the horse’s speed and stamina for the impending performance and the horse lays his bridled will in a human-being’s hands. It all appears to be a strong bond of trust. The horse’s white mane dominates a large part of the painting and reminds me of untamed energy in a roaring waterfall. Holding the reigns tightly in his hand, the rider’s head in contrast seems almost tiny. Horse and rider keep intense eye contact, indicating their close relationship to each other. The tension charged in the contrasting blue and white of this painting creates an immense, effusive mysticism.

…..When comparing Rosalind Porter’s figurative paintings with her landscapes, one cannot help but notice and admire, that both themes are executed with a marvellously magical lightness.……What’s more, she infuses a significant vividness into her work, which stands out on comparison, as a distinguishing attribute. The expression of love and joy are sowith lent an authenticity and utter credibility.

Knowing about an artwork's inner secret is also apparent in her objects in stone or other materials. Central issues of existence are the key matter here again.  

In this highly talented artist's entire work, the importance lies exclusively in communicating  the obscure and fundemental nexus of life. 

I would like to note, that art can only to be manifested with unassuming endeavor. You will find this criterion in Rosalind Porter’s artworks.

UWE SCHEIN - visual artist