Artwork Reviews

IF Gary Tricker's works are impressionistic, the same term applies doubly to Angela Burns's landscapes. Her works at most hint at representationalism, with any concrete landscape forms replaced almost entirely by strong wasges of colour.

The artist's two Jack's Bay works, depiected in winter and in mist, do suggest the forms of the land, but is the coloued brush strokes which provide most of  the impact of her images. This is even more the case with her image of Curio Bay, in which the sand and petrified wood are reduced to powerful gestural lines of ochre and brown.

Intriguingly, it is the works which move the furthest from this gestural approach for which Burns is best known which may provide the most clues to her influences. Cascade reduces rapidly flowing water to a bold colourfield, and in images such as River Meanders and especially Purakaunui Falls there is perhaps a nod to the art of Colin McCahon.

Whether this insight is accurate or not, it is definitely the case that the works are strongly evocative of the rugged coast and climate of the Catlins, and pieces such as Misty Jacks Bay stay in the memory of the viewer as vivid, dreamlike impressions of the land.

James Dignan - 2020

ANGELA BURNS is another artist whose latest work has undergone a very subtle change. The artist has turned her gaze inland, replacing her stained-glass seascapes with the grandeur of inland Central Otago.

In doing so, two things have altered in Burns' art. The most obvious is the change of palette, with the ultramarine Prussian green and blue being replaced with slate greys, earthy browns, and leafier greens. Moreover, a second, more fundamental change has occured. Leaving the mutable flow of coastal waters for the solid body of the high country, Burns' images have become less abstract and more concrete.

This more pictorial approach is most notable in the titular work in the exhibition, The Road to Rocklands. In this piece, although the vegetation and rocky outcrops are only suggested by broad, bold strokes of grey and green, they clearly delineate a hard, rugged land, cut through by a simple single ribbon of road. The fluidity is still present, notably in works such as Dunstan Nightfall, but backed by a strong feeling of solidity.

This is perhaps Bruns' strength: using a very similar technique, she can depict the abstract of the sea and the concrete of the land; the moving, liquid flow of water and the immutable power of the hills.

James Dignan   2019

MEMORABLE moments and lasting impressions are represented in Dunedin artist Angela Burns' latest works, at present on show at Gallery De Novo.

Burns revisits the beaches, rivers and bush of Otago coastal regions through her large-scale acrylic paintings on paper and canvas. At a glance, the works could be labelled entirely abstracted, but on closer inspection ,the tones and lines become figurative representations Undulating lines convey the movement of changing ocean tides, thick and gestural paintwork mimics blurred scenery flashing past a car window and gradated blues and greys become rainwater mixing with a flowing river.

By falling between realism and abstraction, Burns makes a visual representation of the nature of reflection. She presents an impression of her subject matter in the same manner that one remembers a particular time or place: generalisations mixed with only a few details.
Through these techniques, viewers are able to borrow Burns' reflections and make them their own: finding their own memories of a stormy ocean in Rain on Sunday or feeling nostalgia for their summer road trip when viewing Travelling North.

What is consistent throughout these works is Burns' consideration of changes and time as she muses on the ephemeral in life as reflected in nature.

- Samantha McKegg, Otago Daily Times, 2015

ANGELA BURNS has a display of her paintings at Moray Gallery.

The paintings are perhaps best described as abstract impressionist pieces.

These acrylic works on paper and canvas are inspired by the forms of the shore and forest around Blueskin Bay, and capture the play of light on water on land.

The images, expressed in large amorphous sweeps of colour, reflect and reference the ever-changing scenery, the daily fluctuations of the sea, and sunlight dappling through leaves.

Several of the smaller works are mixed media, adding the solidity and harshness of black int to the acrylic to create works where a fierce depth of shadow adds tension to the blues and browns of the sea and land.

There is a calmness to the repeated horizontal strata which bears comparison to the pervasive aural landscapes of ambient music, and the titles of some of these works suggest that this is no coincidence.

The studied equilibrium of these paintings is thrown into sharp relief by the exhibition's largest work, Through bush to the sea, which is also the only oil painting present.

This piece abandons the horizontal linear structure for grand sweeping curves, adding a touch of dynamism to an otherwise relaxing and contemplative display.

- James Dignan, Otago Daily Times, 2015