Hongo David Robertson

My paintings begin with ordinary things: a mug, a cup, a saltshaker, a vessel, a pear, a house, or a familiar stretch of landscape. I am interested in what happens when these everyday subjects are reduced to their essential forms and rebuilt through color, line, texture, and paint.

Working primarily with a restrained palette of earthy browns, olive greens, ochres, muted blues, whites, and occasional stronger colors, I create paintings that move between representation and abstraction. My subjects remain recognizable, but I simplify their forms, flatten their spaces, and use dark, expressive outlines to give them a graphic presence. The canvas itself is an important part of the work; visible weave, brushmarks, scraped passages, and layered paint are allowed to remain as evidence of the process.

I am particularly drawn to repetition and variation. A simple vessel can become a subject in several paintings, each time revealing something different through changes in scale, color, placement, or surrounding space. Landscapes are approached in much the same way, reduced to fields, sky, trees, and buildings until the physical character of the paint becomes as important as the scene itself.

My work is inspired in part by the paintings of J...