FS Colour Series: Shadow Grey inspired by Tomma Abts’ Dusty Vintage
Saeben / Tomma Abts / 2019
British based painter Tomma Abts chooses retro, in-between shades that are hard to place, particularly the dusty, vintage pink of SHADOW GREY Linen. Woven like strips of found fabric into her abstract designs, ribbons of these unusual colours fold over and intersect with one another, creating complex visual puzzles that shift in and out of the light but never give the game away. Soft pinks bring warmth and humanity into her works, suggesting the peachy glow of a half-lit interior. Writer Adrian Searle writes of Abts’ work, “They are a kind of visual origami, or a conjurer’s trick with a handkerchief. They confound us with false steps and trip hazards.”
FS SHADOW GREY Softened Heavy Weight 100% Linen
Though primarily based in London, Abts was German by birth, born in 1967 and raised in the city of Kiel. She later studied at the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin between 1989 and 1995 and following graduation, settled in London. By the early 2000s she was garnering national interest for her clean, refined language of abstraction, which sat at odds with the brash, boldly colourful figuration that was more prevalent around her. After being awarded the Paul Hamyln Foundation Award in 2004, Abts was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2006, prompting wider, international recognition for the quirky, unusual and highly individual style of her paintings.
Untitled (triangle) / Tomma Abts / 2009
Hovering somewhere between figuration and abstraction, Abts’ small paintings hint at illusionistic space with ripples of light or cast shadow, but real meaning slips away before we can grasp it. Built up slowly over time through an intuitive process of layering, Abts sees each work as a living entity with a life force of its own, giving every work a name instead of a title, lifted from a dictionary of first names. In Keke, 2006, made the same year as her Turner Prize nomination, a soft, peachy-pink backdrop provides fleshy warmth to the small canvas, while an intricate, geometric pattern forms a sun dial of colour over its surface. Cold strips of turquoise cut like a sharp knife through the dusty pink surface, lifting here and there and casting strange shadows to add a shallow, low-relief sense of depth and space.
Lya / Tomma Abts / 2015
Wybe, 2014, made several years later, is a more subtle interplay of light, shadow and pattern, as warm pink stripes become strips of slatted, glowing sunlight before fading into softened, quiet shadows. In Lya, 2015, cool, grey-tinged blue forms a flattened backdrop, on which geometric shapes intersect with one another, moving in and out of the scene with energised motion like the endlessly ticking hands of a clock. Here carefully placed strips of dusty pink become shards of light that streak across the scene, opening it up and suggesting a bigger space beyond our window view.
Menso / 2016 / Tomma Abts /
acrylic & oil on canvas and bronze / Photographed by Marcus Leith
Made more recently, the richly toned Menso, 2016, brings a rugged triangle of pale tan, as worn as a patch of suede, jostling against a clean, flat tone of dark turquoise, allowing seemingly old and new surfaces to rub against one another. Over them, radial, intersecting lines fan outwards, catching the light from somewhere far away, and a tinged, thin stick is garnished with panels of vintage rose as pale as strawberry ice-cream. Weie, 2017, by contrast, is a sea of sienna, over which garlands of shifting, kaleidoscopic colour swing with joy and life. Once again, dusty pink becomes the top note, glinting and gleaming in the pink sunlight as if swinging out, way beyond the flat surface of the canvas into another space and time.
‘Always different, always the same’ … Weie / Tomma Abts / 2017 / Photograph: Marcus J Leith
FS SHADOW GREY Softened 100% Linen comes in Midium and Heavy Weight
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6 Comments
Carrie Krumrie
I love, love, love your articles on artist and art! This blog is my own mandatory reading each day!!!!!
I am always drawn to ordering more linen, more linen!!!!
Under strict orders to sew what I have!!!!
Thank you so much for bringing us, the gift of learning about artists, wonderful ideas of clothes, and fabric!
Carrie Krumrie
Rosie Lesso
Thank you for the lovely comment – please do keep reading!
Hari K
Judy has it right this was truly delicious! I’m a former paid grammar police person ? and I’m guessing she’s referring to the possessive form of its not requiring an apostrophe ie its’ is never correct. However I had to reread to find them as I was swept away, as always, by the sensory delights of colour, art and texture. Always a pleasure reading your blog.
Rosie Lesso
Aha, I see it now – that should be it corrected… Thank you for the tips and feedback!
Judy Larison
Your essays on art and color are delicious! Who would have guessed that would fuel my appetite for fabric! (Besides being a glutton for fabric, though, I’m part of the apostrophe police, and I want to make some arrests!)
Rosie Lesso
Thank you so much for the feedback – really glad you are enjoying the articles! It’s a lot of fun linking up fabric colours with artists. In British grammar we can say either Abts’ or Abts’s – unless there are other rogue apostrophes that I missed?