'HOME' Catalogue Essay for Regine Bartsch by Daphne Warburg Astor
17th October 2008
HOME
‘I don’t paint anything I don’t see’ Paul Cezanne
Like Cezanne Regine Bartsch lives her art. Her life flows into her art and her art flows into life. She never seeks material for its own sake but finds the subjects she needs in her own world, at home and in her studio at Cahirsiveen, County Kerry, Ireland. In this exhibition Bartsch reveals a poetic ability to embrace universal emotion and a recognition of the symbolic power of Still Life through the exaltation of the everyday .
HOME, the title of the exhibition, is significant because although Bartsch was born in Hamburg in 1951, by the time she was five years old her Father had become a Director of the Goethe Institute and was posted to Jyvaskyla, Finland. From that time on the family became wanderers, homeless. By 1960 they were living in Damascus, Syria then Helsinki ,Finland where from 1965-1968 Bartsch studied art at the Vapaa Taide Koulu (The Free Art School). Bartsch then returned alone to Hamburg to attend the acclaimed Kunstschule fur Bildendende Kunste where she received both her BA and MA in Fine Art with a focus in Textiles. It was not until 1978, at the age of 27, that Bartsch moved to County Kerry, Ireland where she was asked to set up a tapestry studio and there she began to have a sense of place, belonging, an understanding of the meaning of home.
Bartsch creates her work with an instinctive and commanding use of colour, an intuitive understanding of meaning and the importance of composition. Her style is direct, almost raw, vibrant, unadorned. She comes to terms with her subject matter through a sense of space not evident in conventional perspective, but rather with the use of shifting viewpoints and as a result each element in her paintings control their own positions and convey different emotions. Bartsch works from above, she positions herself as a bird and her images powerfully occupy the front of the picture plane. We experience her paintings directly, often because there is no foreground. Bartsch Still Lifes seem close enough to touch, intimate, exotically familiar. The works in HOME are very personal, they reveal the artist’s feelings, her stories are told through the symbolic use of flowers, clothing, objects, a bed. She gives us keys to the journey of her eclectic creative imagination and practice.
Like the German Expressionists of the first half of the 20th century Bartsch expresses her art with a direct passion. The visual impact of her paintings is alive, the pulsating colours ignite the meaning, the composition is intrinsic, the works are emotive, immediate. The paintings include a strong use of contrasting colours and Bartsch often includes a rhythm of claret red and Tibetan crimson.
She works in many mediums, and combines materials to create a sensual surface, irreverently stretching conventional technical rules. Paint is applied unadulterated directly from the tube, then it is by mixing on the canvas or by the association of one colour next to the other that the energy of vibration is achieved. Bartsch’s sensitive spirit is revealed in the manner of her brush strokes, in the touch in her pastels, and the arena of her watercolours. Her courage is evident in her intense concentration and thematic use of palpably vivid colours.
In content and subject HOME is an exhibition that sees beyond the realms domestic environments and bridges the legacy of the 19th century Japanese woodcuts of Hokusai and Hiroshige, through the German Expressionistic traditions of Wassily Kandinsky, Paula Moderson-Becker and Gabriele Munter to the contemporary work of Patrick Caulfield and Michael Craig Martin. A lingering influence from a childhood exposure to Islamic Art has remained evident in Bartsch’s use of pattern, the syncopation and application of repetition in many of her works.
Regine Bartsch’s work transcends the boundaries of current conventions. She occupies her own autonomous position in the art world and reveals in this exhibition a nomad’s pleasure in a sense of place, a transitory interior, the subtlety and value of detail. The contrast and tension of the luminous colours in HOME reflect the promise, clarity, pure brightness and coherence of Bartsch’s intensely independent art. She stands well placed to enhance her position in contemporary Irish art and with this exhibition enters the prime of her career.
HOME: A place, a region, or state to which one properly belongs, in which one’s affections centre, or where one finds rest, refuge or satisfaction. (1548)
(Oxford English Dictionary)
Daphne Warburg Astor, Artist