Rosie Burns
Obsessive Creative is probably an accurate description. I have always needed something to do, or make. At playschool there was concern that I had no interest in any interaction, just the easels. My knowledge of Art, interacting with materials and technique was nurtured tirelessly by my mother: she taught me to sharpen chisels and carve wood. At 17 I was selling vivid watercolour ink nudes in a café in Kent, doing some private commission work in watercolour and pen and ink. Since then I have taught Palestinian Bedouin English, worked as an Archaeological illustrator, developed pen and ink illustration, exhibited paintings, printmaking, woodcarving, ceramic sculpture and qualified to teach Art. I was a full time Art teacher at De La Salle College in Jersey for six and half years. I had a successful solo show at the Sir John Cheshire Gallery, St Thomas’, Jersey in the autumn of 2004, exhibiting ceramics, paintings, prints and wood carvings. I established myself as a self-employed artist in 2004, supplementing sales of my work with some community based teaching and part time work in a gallery. I have held 5 large successful solo shows at Harbour House, Kingsbridge South Devon; and exhibit in over a dozen galleries, as well as showing work in pubs, restaurants and hotels across the south west of England. I am involved with several North Devon Art
Co-operatives, and have a solo show at the Bristol Guild planned for Summer 2011.
Three Dimensions
My mother made play dough, which was my introduction to working in three dimensions; these led me to working with and teaching ceramics and learning to carve wood. I am interested in experimenting with different clay bodies and firing techniques, pressing metal swarf into wet clay and using a Raku kiln, developing sculptural forms both functional and decorative, processes I will continue to develop. I am great collector of things – bits and stuff: the helicoidal patterns and fibonacci mathematics of shells influence the design process of my ceramic lamps. Spirals are fundamental to nature and mankind, from fir cones and shells to DNA chains. The lamps came about as a result of an interest in projecting light patterns and a bedside lamp that you can read by but not be blinded by on a wintry morning – they project a soft subtle light.
The Prints and Figures
Having trained as an Archaeological illustrator, dry point etching is a very appealing medium to work in, I often use black pen in my sketchbook and sometimes work from these drawings to develop prints. Incising the surface of sections of old CD cases makes the etching plate – I catalogue my CD’s in albums and wanted to make use of the plastic. I print small editions of five prints, partly because the nature of the PVC reduces the maximum edition to about 15 before the line becomes too soft from rubbing the ink on the plate and also because I want to get on to the next print. I like the necessity for precision in the etching process both in the nature of the line on the plate and the process of making the print.
The depiction of women in art has been a preoccupation through a degree in Archaeology: the goddess figures of fertility, the possibility of matriarchal societies in the Neolithic and the dominance of homemaker, gatherer roles for women. Experiencing depictions of women in Degas delicate dancers and burlesque bathers, Rodin’s fallen in the gates of hell and sexualised drawings of women, Henry Moore’s gigantic queens and powerful mothers cradling infants reinforce the same depictions investigated in Archaeology. The prints and sculptures I am currently engaged in making are an attempt to redress the shortage of depictions of women as thinkers, strong, singular entities not mother or queen or sex object, able to indulge and be guilty of sloth, envy, and still maintain feminine beauty and sexiness, a siren: an enticing plea or appeal, especially one that is deceptively alluring. The prints are cardboard cuts – like lino prints but made by cutting into and marking mount board, I work directly from a life model to make the plates so they have an expressive and direct feel. They are printed in relief and I add a gold glaze to some of the backgrounds – the guilt adds to the allure of the female form and contrasts with the strength of the black print. The sculptures are developed from life drawings in white stoneware clay that has a black glaze stain rubbed in to add definition to the intentional and integral marks in the surfaces of the work.
Drawings and Patintings
Drawing is about the construction of form in two dimensions this is an endless source of intrigue: I am rarely without a sketchbook and camera, I continually collect images, sometimes with an immediate piece of work in mind but often I will refer back to photos and drawings. I am fortunate to travel a great deal, my ambition is to spend the European winters - between Novembers and the beginning of March travelling, recording landscapes in watercolour and drawing ~ a blissful occupation. Colour is of great importance to me, my dusk vision is poor – I am frustrated by dark rooms because I can’t see all the colours, this influences my palette in all the colour work I do. Colour is light reflected and refracted, the theories of colour that allow the sky to be green in painting is fascinating. Print making and sculpture take a lot of my time in the winters of the Northern Hemisphere because I feel there is too little light, too little colour. Even within the more traditional or conservative landscapes and seascapes I have developed there is still, I hope, an intensity of colour. I am enthralled by lurid colour; Roal Dufy’s vivid Mediterranean seas, Salvador Dali’s surreal expansive skies and the brilliant colour of Matisse’s paper cuts were colours I was captivated by, from early exposure.
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