The British artist Jane Bustin explores the processes and subject matter of contemporary abstract painting through a practice that combines traditional techniques with a wide variety of materials including aluminium, wood, copper and a recently formulated material NPL Superblack. Bustin modifies her treatment of paint and utilises the qualities and scale of these various supports to make reference to sources and subject matter that explore the nature of perception.

Bustin’s paintings are initiated following intense periods of research or collaboration and have been described as correspondences with, or visualisations of other creative disciplines.

Past projects include ‘Atemwende’ a sequence of diptychs made in response to neologisisms found in the poetry of Paul Celan and ‘Violet and the War’, an installation of paintings and texts that wove together references from a Second World War correspondence between her grandparents, with William Henry Perkin’s experiments into chemicals derived from coal tar, which gave rise to the synthetic production of the colour violet.

Bustin’s paintings recently featured in (and gave title to) ‘Darkness Visible’, a joint exhibition between the Ferens Art Gallery, Hull and Southampton City Art Gallery. Depicting various contemporary individuals’ sense of ‘blackness’ her paintings reduced traditional portraiture to the barest essentials, focusing on the psychological identities of the sitters.

See pdf of the Jane Bustin feature in February's Art World Magazine click here