Tony Rothon – 2001

Tony Rothon is a collector of dedicated fragments. Look at the subjects laid out in these paintings. A dead frog with moth wings. (How poignant can you get?) A bird’s skull rests in a landscape, casting reflections and setting off echoes. An ornamental cabbage is dense with texture like a wall, yet full of delicate colour modulations. Something very fragile (yet at the same time tough) like a wishbone of a chicken, is painted on rough canvas laid over a thick block of wood. The presentation stands as a metaphor for the method: what is illusion, what reality? Rothon is interested in things, in people, in the business of painting. He works from direct observation, in front of the motif – see his simple but lyrical Lettuce Row, or the intent Orchard Landscape – or from memory and imagination, as in the differently inventive Walkers by the Pond. Even when he paints a portrait, subtle and complex as it undoubtedly is, we can only be shown selected highlights of the sitter’s personality. There is no completion, yet the paint itself is far from hesitant. It is applied with sensitivity. It is thoughtful. It can be angry or contemplative, it can be allusive or predominantly descriptive, but it is never coarse. Tony Rothon admits to four mentors: Euan Uglow, Patrick George, Jeffery Camp and Craigie Aitchison. Not a bad pantheon, though it could be overpowering. Somehow Rothon has survived. He recalls Patrick George’s injunction: ‘Don’t be a ponderous painter.’ He isn’t. Subtlety keeps breaking through.

Andrew Lambirth
London: September 2001