WINSTON ROETH

At first glance Roeth’s painted panels of wood or slate appear very simple: flat planes of colour that look a certain way, but which shift in the changing light or as you move around them. They are exquisitely painted in layers of velvety pigment and reveal their secrets slowly: quiet combinations that play gentle tricks on the eye—simultaneously drawing the viewer into dense voids and bouncing the gaze back with a vibrant intensity. Roeth’s compositions are distilled to this apparent simplicity through the most minimal ingredients. Sometimes a picture is divided into grids, a geometric harmony of lines and colours, so that the matt expanse of paint is broken up by shimmeringly luminous lines in a perfect balance of light, depth and colour. Others combine planes of a single colour with a contradictory border: an edge on which the picture turns. In a world so accustomed to instant gratification Winston Roeth’s paintings require and reward an unusual level of contemplation.