Can painting be sensate whilst also utterly restrained? For Kristy Gorman in her new exhibition Room Tones, it most certainly can. Four framed paintings in the back gallery comprise inks on muslin that has firstly been stretched over and then glued down onto board. Their titles are terms applied to cloth, Twill and Bias for example. Gorman allows the warp and weft of fine calico to offer movement, and a sense of texture to a ground that seemingly quivers beneath the painted forms.
Edge is an important constant in Gorman's painting – announcing difference with both razor-like precision and across gradients of soft, tonal change. Colour hums pitch perfect, as geometries transition and evolve within compositions. This sounds busy, and the paintings on paper and board are considered and intense. There are dancing diagonals, inset planes, and now careful curves. Colour diamonds pulse and push, forms touch, cascade and are cropped as they leave the page. Strange and compelling transparencies flicker before our eyes. Yet many of these works feel wonderfully still. Gorman's touch activates our senses with signature elegance and restraint. To experience her painting requires scrutiny, a similar duty of care, and finally the pleasure of intimacy.
JS
Press release courtesy Jonathan Smart Gallery.
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