Preview: ELEANOR BARTLETT 'TAR PAINTINGS'

Curated by Michael Simpson

Tar: road surfaces, roofs, waterproofing - extracted from the ground or industrially synthesised from coal, petroleum, peat, wood - hard-wearing, hard-working, toil, endurance, tactility, viscosity.

Tintype is pleased to present Eleanor Bartlett’s Tar Paintings, a solo-presentation of Bartlett’s recent works using tar as her primary medium. Bartlett says “... tar directs the work, you have to defer to its own characteristics, understand its difficult character. It excludes a lot of possibilities and this creates boundaries. Its physicality makes it feel like the work must be wrestled and dragged into existence.”

Painting with tar requires a sculptural approach, Bartlett primes the canvases with white metal paint, then applies the tar with trowel, sticks, knives, and her hands, using a spare palette of creams, blacks and browns.

Barlett’s work has a raw, visceral intensity. Her main impetus and driving force is to describe and resolve elemental form.

A specially commissioned text by writer Kate Christina Mayne accompanies the exhibition.

Recent shows include: Requiem, Salisbury Cathedral Cloisters (solo) 2017; Nine Painters, Syson Gallery, Nottingham, curated by Richard Davey, 2017; Drawing Projects UK, (solo) 2016; Waiting Room (solo) 2016, Trowbridge Town Hall, 2016; Bruton Museum (solo), Frome, 2014; Updown Gallery, Ramsgate, 2014; The Parlour, Frome (solo) 2013; Pallant House, Chichester, 2012; Princes Foundation Gallery, London, 2012; Minerva Gallery, Chichester 2012.