Thomas Robinson: articulating thoughts on the surface of a painting

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David Ecclestone met one of his favourite artists – here he tells us why Thomas Robinson’s work is so important to him

To paint a landscape well is to paint a mood.  It is to capture a moment in time quite as much as to paint a place.  It seems to me that this concern with the ephemeral underlies the concern with seriality evident in the work of Tom Robinson (b.1979).  In his work we see the same sequestered stretch of Norfolk woodland again and again in different guises much as we can view   the facade of Rouen Cathedral in different conditions under Monet’s hand.  This is not to push the similarity too far: for one thing Robinson moves his separate images into increasing alignment rather than increasing variation.

This concern with seriality also explains Robinson’s presence in this Norfolk backwater.  The village is undeniably lovely and while this alone would justify the choice, Robinson’s reasons are more basic.  Here was an opportunity to own his own stretch of landscape, literally on his doorstep and always available to observe and to paint.  The echoes of Monet’s purchase of the poplars he painted on the bank of the Epte in 1981 are obvious.  I suspect that the motives are similar: practicality rather than attachment.  When Monet had finished painting the trees he sold them to a lumber merchant.  But then Monet had a short boat trip when he wanted to paint.  Robinson only has to step outside his door.  Which he does – most of his landscapes are painted in the open.

His present series, painted in the winter, resides on the walls of his home – subject to constant assessment and adaptation.  Still a work in progress.  Towards what?  Here I sense an element of the unresolved.  For me that is hardly a problem: most of the painting that interests me has at least a hint of ambiguity, but when I put this to Robinson he resisted it, saying that he is always working to reduce ambiguity and to strive for clarity.  This impulse works against his sensitivity to mood.  Such a sensitivity would lead to an expectation of increasing difference in the works as they seek to express it.  Instead,  Robinson speaks of an impulsion towards an over-arching design and unity, towards a narrowing of difference.   His blending of pigments on the palette produces a uniformity of hue on the canvas such that the escape from the blend of a small element of primary colour produces a celebratory response from the viewer that Robinson embraces.  Perhaps it represents that occasional moment of light that escapes the months-long twilight of the northern winter.

The painting, then, is an object – a construct of paint on board – before Robinson permits any hint of narrative to creep in to consideration.  For similar reasons titles are admitted only as distinguishing labels, not as indications of intent.  Although Robinson is not subject to seasonal affective disorder, he does consider his work to be an escape from winter and the escape is through the physical activity as much as the intellectual engagement.  This is why he paints on board not on canvas; he wants the resistance of the solid support. He doesn’t use a medium to dilute or improve flow in the colours.    This is pigment straight from the tube to be blended directly.  The effect is a finish that is completely matt, so that the effect of the very heavy impasto is strangely suppressed by doing away with reflections from the energetically worked surface.  This is one of the reasons that the very textured surface hardly shows in reproductions.

This is in contrast to the also very heavily impasted paintings of the German-born British painter Frank Auerbach (b. 1931), with whom Robinson has been in touch and who he says has provided support.  Auerbach and London artist Leon Kossoff (b.1926)  seem to be forerunners (although they are both very much painters of the city scene).  In fact, Robinson is not overly concerned with history, except perhaps in the anthropological ‘long view’.   He was taught by Francis Hoyland and Ann Dowker and attended Prince’s Drawing School and the Byam Shaw School of Art. He is still a young man, but I sense someone in a hurry to establish a defining personal style.

I can see similarities with the work of the Fauve artist Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958): largely their shared search for structure.  There is none of Vlaminck’s use of bright and intense Fauvist colour (but then Vlaminck eventually abandoned that), but there is a strong sense of place and time.  Robinson’s abandonment of wide colour variation is of a piece with his search for a personal identify.  My own feeling is that he has reduced the means at his disposal for expression and engagement and that his message is now so tightly focused that his potential audience has been minimised.  Up to now he has never considered an audience, which demonstrates his integrity. 

When we met I asked him about the numerous books of poetry on his shelves and whether he believed that there were literary influences on his own pictorial imagery. He told me:

Painting is not semantic. The thinking that goes on when working is not verbal. It’s difficult to express this, but in the hours in each day spent working one's ideas and feelings seem to happen without commentary. The thoughts are, with luck, articulated on the surface of the painting.  After a break from painting or on a bad day then, of course, one can be very self-conscious, and everything will fall apart; but that I think is a useful chance to rebuild. I don't think I have ever made a painting about a literary subject. But of course painting is not in a vacuum, nor are we. I suppose that everything one engages with meaningfully probably influences the conventions we invent to make a visual language. To that extent the architecture behind a poem (or a piece of music), those structures, do get imprinted in the same manner that drawing from another painting or sculpture educates one in that design. How it all comes out, I am not sure.

I asked him which of his recent paintings were the most significant for him. He replied:

There are certain paintings that seem to signpost the way ahead. I can remember strongly the experience of making them. Today the paintings that seem most important to me are 'under the trees towards the pond' and a painting titled 'bank'.

Robinson told me that he does not differentiate between his portraiture and his graphic work, between drawing and painting: ‘certainly not hierarchically… other than that there is something intrinsic about different mediums’. He chooses his medium according to the subject. It will be interesting to see how his work develops over the years ahead.