 | “When I paint, I want to see how far I can push colour. It’s a kind of escapism. On a dull day, if you surround yourself with bright colours, you feel joyful, uplifted!"
Ursula Buston works with feverish energy; applying colour, then washing it away before replacing it with another, then another, ultimately creating a magical hue, which is difficult to describe in words. The nearest would be ‘dissonance’ in music. "I painted figurative landscapes until I went to Art School(Bath Spa University) where they encouraged me to go abstract. Before that I worked in interior design where a more subdued palette was required. However my original love of colour stemmed from being brought up in Ireland and visiting tweed mills in Donegal. Everywhere I walked I was conscious of the acid yellow of gorse and fuchsia hedges with a clash of red and purple. My mother filled the house with hand dyed rugs and wore very colourful clothing. Her favourite journal was Vogue, all of which lodged in my memory. I don't think that colour can necessarily be taught, you either have an eye for it or you don't, however children paint without fear of making mistakes and I think more can be done to encourage adults to pick up a paint brush, in the knowledge that what they paint will appeal to them. Now, with an M.A. in Fine Art, she is driven to produce richly embellished panels in Acrylic on canvas. Hung in the right setting, they do what tapestries did in the past, bring rooms to life. |
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