Abstraction is rooted in fields and architecture

Although, on the surface, there appears to be much that links the work of these artists — blocks of colour, abstract forms and the use of a variety of printmaking techniques — their approach is quite different.

Haxworth, who hails from Oxford, works in rural Aberdeenshire and it is the landscape of this area that informs her work. Sensory experience, absorbed on walks and journeys, is translated into abstract compositions, full of big, bold colours, expressed in monoprint or as painted reliefs.

The titles reveal some of Haxworth’s inspiration, as well as her mood: A Glint of Sea Across the Howe, Fields and Furrows. The Howe to which she refers is the Howe of the Mearns, made famous by Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s trilogy, A Scots Quair. Like the Scots author, Haxworth is inspired by the sweep of the land, from the high mountains of the Grampians to the moors, the scattered woodlands, the fields and farms, and eventually the coast and the sea.

It’s not difficult to like these works: they are easy on the eye and, for want of a better term, highly decorative. They sit easily in a domestic environment, they reproduce well and translate into other media (such as carpets and wall hangings). But they are carefully crafted and composed, revealing a highly trained professionalism.

It’s important to acknowledge that Haxworth is working in a long tradition of abstraction. Her painted reliefs, much more geometrically orientated than her work in other media, seem to extend at least as far back as the early work of Ben Nicholson, the sculptor and abstract painter with whom she engages in a meaningful artistic dialogue.

Like Haxworth, Nicholson (1894-1992) was also inspired by rural and coastal landscapes, although in his case it was at the other end of the country, in Cornwall where he lived for almost 20 years.

Rosalind Lawless’s work is more technically complex, employing a wider variety of media, often in combination. Whereas Haxworth’s work is rooted in the rural, Lawless uses the urban, with its architecture, forms, shapes and shadows, as the starting point for her layered imagery.

In her rather quiet and unstated way she is pushing the boundaries of her media and the tradition in which she works. Stairwell with Soft Linen, for example, combines textile, screen-print and collaged paper, and here this architectural feature is suggested rather than depicted by the use of a cut-out technique.

It’s also worth mentioning here the print studio’s featured artist, Fionnuala McGowan, who takes the base material normally ignored in the printmaking process (paper) as the basis for her abstract compositions.

By folding and arranging the paper into various geometric forms, which are transformed through photography and printed (with iron and copper powder) the Belfast-born artist’s results are both intriguing and visually arresting.

Until March 31.