Rosslyn Berot-Burns
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Biography
Oil on Canvas
24” x 36”
Rosslyn Berot-Burns was born in Trinidad and currently lives and works in Toronto. She works mainly in oil paints but also paints in watercolour and acrylics. Rosslyn received her diploma from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1991. In her fourth year she was awarded the W.O. Forsythe award for Drawing and Painting.
Since graduating she had participated in many solo and group exhibitions. Rosslyn continues to reflect her West Indian heritage in both theme and colour.
Artist's Statement
I want to engage the viewer in that moment when anything can happen. I work as though moving to a beat. The pace of my work moves from slow to fast as moments of long contemplation shifts to working quickly then slowly once more as I strive toward completion of an image.
I start with a fascination of how the light works to create both mood and images acting within an environment. Light plays on the things it touches to create an atmosphere that quietly influences our mood and shapes our responses. In this context, the human figure is a very rich and varied form to play upon.
Lately, I use my paint as a sculpting material and my brush the tool with which to push the coloured mud around to develop my images. It is like piling on layers of paint in different stages in order to feel around the image. Often I leave the layers as they were originally laid in and build up in other areas to draw the viewer into a point of interest by the resulting contrasts.
As a child growing up in Trinidad I heard stories from my mother about the mythological characters (that lived) in the forests and villages of the island.
Often told in the dim glow of candle light, the memories of them remain strong and often my work will wander back to the images of the characters (such as Papa Bois) and what they represent. The stories, characters, and images make me think about what truth or lesson gave rise to them.