Josephine Broekhuizen – Seeing Things Grow

03-02-2018 - 24-02-2018

Island life to some may sound remote or isolating from mainstream culture but for an artist like Josephine Broekhuizen and her sculptor husband Tim Pomeroy it offers the space and tranquillity to create. However, Josephine is no parochial island artist. She has a rich cultural life, bringing years of practise to her work as a painter who has successfully exhibited in London, Edinburgh, throughout Scotland and regularly with Compass Gallery.

Naturally influenced by her location on the Isle of Arran, overlooking the Holy Isle, with its array of wildlife, plant life, woodlands and coastlines, there is a certain calmness fundamentally expressed in her paintings. Josephine is both an artist and a gardener. She grows exotic succulents; strongly sculptural and patterned, which appear regularly in her beautiful paintings. Her garden provides sustenance, inspiration and materials for her canvases. The link between her garden tools and her paintbrush are a harmonious factor in her work and shows that the connection between cultivating and paintings is a long, intimate and symbiotic one.

"My recent paintings are inspired by the flowers in my garden. Specifically a big border I have been establishing over three years. The flowers grow in banks one in front of another. In the height of summer they are a riot of colour and crazy directions. They jostle for light and space. The paintings I hope reflect something of that reconciled jostle of colour and dynamic shape. These are some of the elements within the painting that are not necessarily representational; these come from my imagination. They are to add both core movement and aspects of the mysterious".

These paintings are much more than just flower studies. "They exude depth in which a notion of timelessness and poetry exist; they are as colourful as they are thoughtful and evoke meditation and enquiry. They are at one moment studies in planting and at another, an essay on reflection. They are affirmative statements of belonging."

Josephine admires the painting and draughtsmanship of artists such as Jack Knox and a glance through her sketchbooks filled with strong tonal drawing reflects this. Collage and drawings develop into screen-prints and the paintings inspired by the flowers are filled with both sculptural shapes, dynamic internal movements and delicate colour relationships that fall into place like a jigsaw of composition. There is more present in these paintings than meets the eye. Elements of her work are strongly design based; deconstructed still-lifes and other strands of her work are intense observations of knarled branches and bark developed into smoky abstracts.

Born in Holland, she originally studied as a vet and is the granddaughter of the Dutch painter Jacob Maris. Trained at the Academy for Visual Ats in Rotterdam (1977-81), then at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen (1982-84), her work still retains the core essential visual elements learned back in Holland.

A regular exhibitor in Compass Gallery, we have represented her at London Contemporary Art Fair for several years, however we have only ever shown her charming paintings a few at a time. This forthcoming solo exhibition offers the opportunity to see the full breadth and aspect of her work.