Roisin Bateman: Abstractions Crackling with the Energy of Change (Hampton's Art Hub article)
Peter Marcelle Project: Roisin Bateman Paintings, Pastels and Prints (Slideshow of solo exhibition)
Eric Ernst, ‘Perspectives’ – Southampton Press
“Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate in Sag Harbor has, since the firm began exhibiting artwork, illustrated a more challenging set of exhibition priorities. Showing a significantly courageous and inventive sense of vision in the artists and types of art highlighted, the venue has demonstrated an openness to new and ambitious artwork that some other galleries would do well to emulate.
This trend is continued in the current exhibition of paintings by Roisin Bateman. These works are, despite their lush and flowery colouration, compositionally explosive and glaringly vibrant, with and inner sense of turmoil that is quite arresting and not always soothing.
Displaying an understanding of structure that is highly organic and bereft of architectonic tools, Ms. Bateman is able nevertheless to reflect a profound feeling of depth and implied perspective in a manner so subtle it stands in marked contrast to the work’s surface discordances.
She is able to do this in no small part through a recognition of the fluidity and rhythmic qualities of the natural world around us that is not always superficially harmonious nor particularly temperate. Depicting a highly poetic view of our environment, albeit one that is in no way idealistic, the paintings reflect Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s view of the impact of poetry itself as arising from “ a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination.”
This is apparent in “Prodigal Summer” (oil on canvas 2003), in which the artist uses powerfully expressive brush strokes and highly charged compositional balance to create an organic tableau that effectively reflects the contradictory qualities of nature. Able to embody a sense of questionable and sometimes malevolent augury, she uses light and colour as both complementary and contradictory elements that are obviously highly choreographed, yet still refreshingly random.”
‘Art Commentary’ with Marion Wolberg Weiss – Dan’s Papers
“Roisin Bateman is another good example of an artist who has traveled to many parts of the globe, finally settling on the East End. It’s a pleasure to see how the artist has interpreted an environment in an abstract mode, her dark colours, strong strokes and both vertical and horizontal formats adding energy to the subdued quality conveyed by the rest of the exhibit.”