David Bromfield

1992 PICA Show review

Two first-rate shows by middle-aged masters opened in town last week. At PICA, Bob Brighton's brilliant abstractions are exclusively concerned with colour at it's most lyrical.

Bob Brighton has reached the point of self-sufficient originality Colour field painting has been around for some decades. It's central dilemma remains unchanged. Colour always requires clear shape to make it perceptible. Yet any shape tends to impose unwelcome formal inflections on the colour relations which are the painter's only concern.

It takes tremendous persistence to get to the point, as Brighton has, where colour can act almost autonomously.

The immediate fascination of his large, lyrical paintings lies in his special solutions to this problem. He is able to use a sequence of carefully proportioned vertical stripes, or a vast field of small oblongs to lead the eye through the experience of slowly changing colour relations.

Brighton has spent more than a decade developing a pure palette with more than 90 hues. This enables him to make the precise harmonic changes that alone distinguish his work from commercial colour charts.

On the end wall of the main gallery is a long, thin green cloth with a double geometrical reflex of white and red lines giving the illusion of tilting out into the space beyond.

This is Brighton's response to the work by his friend Brian Blanchflower, shown in the same space earlier this year.

Brighton is in Perth working alongside Blanchflower until October. He is interested to meet people who are curious about his art. he can be contacted through PICA.

David Bromfield
Perth, Australia
1992