Gina Burdass - Paintings

4 - 28 May 2005

The importance of colour in painting can be overlooked, particularly if it is mistakenly considered to be an adjunct rather than an integral part of the painting. Colour is highly complex.

In 1960 Ad Reinhardt said: "There is something wrong, irresponsible and mindless about colour, something impossible to control." From then on, for the last seven years of his life, he worked with colours which were exceptionally dark where the difference in hue was so subtle as to be on the edge of perception.

Bridget Riley talks of how she tried to find a firm basis for colour and says it was some years before she understood clearly that the firm basis lay, in fact, in its opposite: instability.

Colours can be extremely volatile. Depending on context their identities shift, often in unexpected ways. I try to bring out the differences in the colours through their interaction and, whilst allowing each colour to retain its own distinctive character, almost let one colour dominate and shatter the unity which has been established…but not quite.