 |
in NY State |
Roisín Bateman
Roisín Bateman was born in Galway, Ireland in 1964. In 1986 she moved to Sag Harbor, New York where she currently lives and works. She has had solo and group exhibitions in galleries in Ireland and the United States, including Elise Goodheart Fine Arts, Sag Harbor, NY, Nightingale Gallery, Watermill, NY, Nabi Gallery, Sag Harbor and New York City, and The Linenhall Arts Center, Castlebar, Co. Mayo.Roisín attended Belfast College of Art, where she received her B.F.A. in 1986.
I grew up in the wild and magical landscape of the Connemara coast. The qualities of that landscape with its ever-shifting texture of sea and sky, small rocky fields and hawthorn bushes bent by winter gales, live within me as inner landscape. It is this inner wellspring upon which I draw much of my inspiration for painting.
Weather too with it's constant metamorphic effects upon this landscape informs my work - dark moody skies with rolling clouds which can at any moment give way to a sudden burst of sunlight, bringing everything into a heightened state of colour and aliveness.
The landscape of Eastern Long Island, New York, where I currently live and work, is of a very different quality. Its texture is much more light-reflective - large expanses of sandy shore and flat farmland. The rhythm of the year is more clearly defined - the sharp defining cold of winter, the welcome release of spring, the sensuous heat of summer and the surrender and deep colours of autumn.
The juxtaposition of these two environments creates a tension and a balancing of forces which provide a very rich soil from which to create new form and expression.
Painting, for me, creates a dynamic interplay and bridges the gap between these two worlds.