Overview
Flowers Gallery is pleased to present Cambridge Diamonds, a series of new silkscreen monoprints by British artist Carol Robertson in memory of her long-time collaborator master printmaker Kip Gresham.
Robertson has worked exclusively with Gresham at The Print Studio in Cambridge since 2011. The editions made in his workshop include Starcross, Maya, Navajo, and Astral and many series of monoprints, such as the Copán and Free Fall series, and in 2022 Astral Variation and Luna.
Kip Gresham died in 2024. Deeply saddened by his death, Robertson wanted to dedicate a new project to his memory. With permission from his wife Jane Gresham to use the Cambridge studio once more, she asked his one-time intern, Callum Rose to collaborate with her on Cambridge Diamonds in March 2025.
On the source of inspiration for this series Carol Robertson said:
In September 2024 I worked on a month-long artist residency in south- west France in the Midi Pyrenees. I produced a series of small oil paintings with diamond motifs using local colour as a source. I frequently work with circles but wanted to mark my change of routine and environment by painting these sharp pointed formations that differ so radically from the realm of perfect sphere. Upon my return to London I began to find more and more connections between the improvised nature of a lot of music I listen to, namely contemporary jazz, and the way I was intuitively improvising with colour.
I wanted to make an interactive series of colourful monoprints that developed quickly: finding rhythms, repetitions, patterns, held within a single heraldic line of quartered diamonds. They could be vertical or horizontal, held within a limited range of coloured circles or squares or floated directly on to white paper. Using a restricted range of inks I could move from print to print adding harmonies, tensions, clashes and contrasts. Depending on my ground colours, when I overprinted, the same inks would behave differently, according to their transparency or opacity as well as reacting to the intensity of neighbouring colours. I gave myself a lot of freedom to improvise. Making these prints felt like a mix of rehearsal and final performance. - Carol Robertson
Carol Robertson enjoys making monoprints because it allows her to experiment with unique colour variations in a highly personal manner. Using multiple screens she can work quickly and intuitively, over-printing where necessary, freely improvising as she goes along. She sees colour as a vital key, viewing it in a similar way to music: enabling us to unlock our emotions and be transported to a different mindset.
About Carol Robertson
Carol Robertson was first introduced to printmaking by Garner Tullis at the Tullis Print Workshop in Santa Barbara CA in the late 1990’s. She worked with Garner’s son Richard, who encouraged her to work with oil paint directly onto aluminium plates: she loved the immediacy and physicality of the process and its close relationship with painting. Carol Robertson has continued to experiment within the print medium ever since.
In 2000 Flowers Gallery introduced her to Pete Kos at Hope Sufferance Press in London, where she made aquatint etchings for the first time. In 2006 she was commissioned by Peter Foolen Editions in The Netherlands to make her first screen print edition East West, then shown at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and acquired in the UK for the Government Art Collection.
Carol Robertson's paintings remain firmly rooted within reductive abstract conventions. Although she doesn't seek to confirm or record the way the world looks, her work is never disconnected from it. She continues to make an informal relationship with landscape, architecture, nature and the environment. Her current work still employs familiar geometric formations, particularly circles, but in recent years she has also deconstructed the circle into arcs, thereby exploring a more disruptive asymmetry. From 2005 onwards all her paintings are prepared with poured and stained grounds, often in many layers. These atmospheric and unstructured colour fields complement the carefully drawn and over-painted geometry. Throughout her career she has chosen to use the square, rectangle and circle for their ideal power, for their aesthetic beauty.
The power and beauty of geometric form and detail provides me with a catalyst for ways to make art. Adopting the formal restraints of a reductive and often repetitive geometric language takes the chaos out of what otherwise would be an impossibly vast set of visual options upon which to pin my existence. Geometry allows me to concentrate on the essential. It allows me the freedom to channel sensory or poetic material through its refined parameters. The circle is the most archetypal of all the forms I use: it has a universal resonance, so frequently found in art, architecture and ritual: an evocation of the universe and the heavens: the journey inwards, or outward, to or from the centre: a symbol of wholeness, completion and infinity: the unbroken line with no beginning or end: the eternal cycle.
Carol Robertson lives and works in London. She was Research Fellow in Painting at Cardiff School of Art & Design from 2003 - 2008. Her work has been exhibited extensively in the UK and Europe, also in Japan and the USA. Since 2001 she has been a Returning Fellow at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland. In 2012 she was artist in residence at the Kunstgarten in Graz, where she made 3D objects for the first time. In 2018 she was elected an Academician by the Royal West of England Academy.