Gaps - Spain 2019-2021

In 2019, at the SWAc AGM, Robert Mountjoy gave an illustrated talk about his work and described how the two-decade obsession with small intense still-life paintings had developed. In December of that year, he planned an exhibition of these paintings with Michael Carter, the photographer. The painter’s contribution was to be 21 of these still-life paintings. The exhibition created an opportunity to see and assess the work all together but in a different context. In his talk Mountjoy confessed he felt he had maybe taken this figurative approach as far as he could and was thinking of ‘moving on’.  

Subsequently, he started a new sketchbook and filled it with small collages made from cut paper, scraped with layers of paint which were creased, crumpled and painted over again. He cut these coloured and distressed sheets into irregular rectangles with convex sides and reassembled them as small intimate collages. His fascination with the coming together of distinct forms, previously exploited in the still life series, was now being celebrated in a more abstract way. The ‘gaps’ between the forms became the focus, hence the names given to paintings in this series.

In September 2019, Mountjoy took an unscheduled trip to Spain, visiting Andalucía and its historic sites. He took a sketchbook and a camera and came back full of new ideas, minimalist forms and textures, but most of all colours—earth reds - intense and bleached out, with deep yellows and dusty grey blues. 

Sketches from the time in Spain were scaled up and motifs found that led to a new series of abstract paintings.

Finding Gaps, a short Youtube video that explains the development of this series of paintings can be viewed by clicking on the following link. https://youtu.be/rNXJ0KoJR5s

Please scroll down to view the sketches, drawings and resulting paintings