ILLUSIONIST

BARBARA BALMER: ARTIST IN FOCUS

  • Barbara Balmer had a singular vision. Her pictures have a curious, if not surreal, edge. In her instantly recognisable style, she took the everyday and simplified it into shapes and patterns that she filled with subtle gradations of colour.

     

    Balmer produced work over five decades. She taught and exhibited across Scotland, and many of her paintings feature in public collections, some of her best are in Glasgow Museums. Latterly, she has slipped from public notice, but she never quite achieved the reputation she deserved, even in life. Born in Birmingham, she moved to Scotland by way of a scholarship from Coventry School of Art that took her to Edinburgh College of Art (1949-1953). Her contemporaries are a roll call of familiar names of Scottish art: Elizabeth Blackadder, John Houston and Frances Walker to name a few. Balmer, however, eschewed the expressive brushwork and vibrant palette of the time and developed her own unique visual vocabulary.

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  • Her quiet, often large-scale oils, belie a poetry of mood. Their stillness gives way to a range of emotions: from...

                       Barbara Balmer RSA RSW, Night

    Her quiet, often large-scale oils, belie a poetry of mood. Their stillness gives way to a range of emotions: from nostalgia to unease. Night, a surreal vision of a garden by moonlight, balances an abstract sense of pattern with a delicate air of elegy. This dreamlike vision is even more heightened in Little May Tree, 1973, which captures a nocturnal enchantment that takes the viewer back to childhood. Despair, a large drawing of a lay figure curled up on the ground, does indeed vividly convey that emotion, as the picture is embroiled in an overwhelming feeling of vulnerability. In Voyage of the Creeper, 1974, a mesmerising labyrinth of vines overtakes the roof of a house, evoking a similar feeling of disquiet.

     

    Windows are often used by Balmer as a compositional device of a frame within the frame, either to capture a view, or against which to set a still life. In White Window, 1966, her ability to layer patterns is particularly evident: the prolific umbrella plants overtake the astrigalled window, behind which confetti-like snow falls, highlighted against an old yew tree.

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  • Barbara Balmer RSA RSW 1929-2017Little May Tree, 1973 signed; signed, titled, dated 1973 and inscribed with artist's address on frame verso oil on board 48 x 40 in 121.9 x 101.6 cm (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Barbara Balmer RSA RSW 1929-2017Voyage of the Creeper signed; signed and titled on frame verso oil on board 39 3/4 x 47 3/4 in 101 x 121.3 cm (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Barbara Balmer RSA RSW 1929-2017Despair (Layperson), 1988 signed; signed, titled and dated 1988 on backboard pencil 27 1/2 x 42 1/2 in 69.8 x 108 cm (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Barbara Balmer RSA RSW 1929-2017White Window signed; signed, titled, dated and inscribed with artist's address on frame verso oil on board 48 x 59 3/4 in 121.9 x 151.8 cm (Larger version of this image opens in a popup).
    Barbara Balmer RSA RSW, Little May Tree, 1973
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  • Balmer started to take annual working trips to Italy in the early 1970s. Early Renaissance artists, Piero della Francesca, Fra...

    Barbara Balmer RSA RSW, Celebration for San Agostino (San Gimignano), 1980

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    Balmer started to take annual working trips to Italy in the early 1970s. Early Renaissance artists, Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico and Giotto, had inspired her during her studies. The soft pastel palette of Giorgio Morandi was also important to her. Theatre of Dreams (1978) and Celebration for San Agostino (San Gimingnano) are both quintessential Italian views. These visions, if that is what they are, so carefully and delicately drawn together, are perhaps, as Professor Duncan MacMillan suggests, an evocation of an insubstantial dream. The same unsettling but dream-like quietude can be seen in Etruscan Mists, 1989: the lattice of trees preventing the dreamer from escaping into the penumbral Tuscan hills.

     

    The almost monochromatic palette of Etruscan Mists relates to another painting so completely opposite in its subject: Triptych Bedscapes Imprint I, II and III. The bedclothes have become imaginary landscapes, and each panel mirrors the topography and mood of the other. In a recent review, Duncan MacMillan noted that ‘the paintings are also masterpieces of cubist composition as the folds evolve into intersecting planes defined by sharp lines.’

     

    Balmer’s technical virtuosity is clear to see, and so too that her technique and style sets her apart from her contemporaries. The artist’s poetic sensibilities though, are perhaps best summarised by the art critic W. Gordon Smith:

  • I am reminded of Saladin’s scimitar scything silk. Landscape and interiors veiled in pink and lilac mist. Skies showering confetti instead of snow. Breezes are zephyrs. Beds invite the rapture of sleep. Intimate portraits beguile, she sorcerer and illusionist, yet the world she makes is real.’
    • Barbara Balmer RSA RSW Triptych Bedscapes, Imprint I, 1992 signed, inscribed and dated 1992 verso watercolour 32 1/2 x 38 inches 82.5 x 96.5 cm
      Barbara Balmer RSA RSW
      Triptych Bedscapes, Imprint I, 1992
      signed, inscribed and dated 1992 verso
      watercolour
      32 1/2 x 38 inches
      82.5 x 96.5 cm
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    • Barbara Balmer RSA RSW Triptych Bedscapes, Imprint II, 1992 signed, inscribed and dated 1992 verso watercolour 32 1/2 x 38 inches 82.5 x 96.5 cm
      Barbara Balmer RSA RSW
      Triptych Bedscapes, Imprint II, 1992
      signed, inscribed and dated 1992 verso
      watercolour
      32 1/2 x 38 inches
      82.5 x 96.5 cm
      ENQUIRE
    • Barbara Balmer RSA RSW Triptych Bedscapes, Imprint III, 1992 signed, inscribed and dated 1992 verso watercolour 32 1/2 x 38 inches 82.5 x 96.5 cm
      Barbara Balmer RSA RSW
      Triptych Bedscapes, Imprint III, 1992
      signed, inscribed and dated 1992 verso
      watercolour
      32 1/2 x 38 inches
      82.5 x 96.5 cm
      ENQUIRE

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