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photo by Caryl Roese 2002. Rosemary Burton
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"The Red Chair" 1999
oil on wood
c.61x61cm
"Portrait of a young woman" 1987
oil & sand on canvas
c.61x46cm
"The White Screen" 1999
oil on board
c.69x51cm(1&3=in private collections, 2=artist's collection)
Rosemary Burton was born in 1939 in Cardiff. She studied Fine Art from 1974 to 1978 at the Polytechnic of Wales in Barry and thereafter taught for many years in a Comprehensive School in Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan as well as in other schools in the area. She is married to the painter Charles Burton.
Artist's Statement: "Over the years I have drawn, painted & made collages depicting flowers and they have become one important part of my work. They are also a part of my earliest childhood memories, one of which is of the family walks with my father pointing out the beauty, shapes & names of wild flowers. He also kept a lovely garden with a great variety of changing plants. I still enjoy looking at & having flowers around me and with this background it is not surprising that they appear regularly in my work."
Rosemary Burton's still lifes seem to record very privat spaces. Most are recognisably within the special sanctuary of her own studio. Each picture concentrates the eye on something beautiful cached here for contemplation - a piece of pottery, a chair, or flowers. But there is also the complex geometry of her attic room, the little skylight, the array of mirrors, bottles, cloths and furniture and the night-time window and interior reflections, which accentuate the sense of being in a private den. She is challenging in her perspectives, always probing juxtapositions of shape and colour, divining subtly the personality of things and opening windows into worlds of ambiguity (quoted from Peter Wakelin's comments in the catalogue to an exhibition in Nov.2000 at Cafe Brava in Cardiff).
Most of Rosemary Burton's work depicts objects in their settings, flowers, jugs, tables, chairs & mirrors. She has a great thrill in having flowers around and in painting them before they disappear like actors departing the stage. The pictures are worked on until the leap into space becomes absolutely resolved and they become both contemplative & stimulating.
