Aaron Kasmin creates images of great formal elegance: spare, hard-won, small in scale but full of quiet power. He works with coloured pencil on paper. His favoured motifs are everyday objects. He makes us see them anew.

'What I am trying to convey in my work is the pleasure and beauty of looking. I compose small images which play with scale, balance, space, colour and harmony. I enjoy the idiosyncrasies of the freely drawn line. The mood and character of each work is determined by the imperfections of the human eye recreating and interpreting exactly what is in front of it.

My work at first glance appears to be very simple, just bands of colour; but these bands are imbued with subtlety and balance. I use a variety of textures; flatness, depth, shiny and matt surfaces, opacity and clarity to try to achieve a certain balance and harmony. For these pictures to look so simple takes a surprisingly long time; many layers of paint are built up and often removed before I achieve the completed final image.

The painted surface contains many subtleties and slowly the picture begins to determine itself, maybe one colour which then dictates the course of the whole, one large area leading to smaller ones, one part scraped and complex next to many flat simpler areas, or maybe painted with broad sweeping brushstrokes or small feathery ones.

Although my work is known for being abstract I have also made figurative still life drawings, though until now I have kept them private. But really the chasm between abstraction and figuration is not so huge, because one is dealing with the same concepts - composition, scale, size and colour. It is just the finished pictures that are radically different."

Aaron Kasmin studied at the Chelsea School of Art in London. He has exhibited in New York, Paris and London. This is his first show at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery.

Rebecca Hossack Gallery
2a Conway Street, Fitzroy Square
London W1T 6BA United Kingdom
Ph. +44 (0)20 74364899
info@rebeccahossack.com
http://www.rebeccahossack.com/

Opening Hours
Monday - Saturday
From 10am to 6pm