Roses
“The rose, the queen of the flowers, has featured in many of my works and has been the inspiration for poets and painters for centuries,” says Furr. “For the Greeks, roses were associated with the myth of Aphrodite and Adonis, from whose blood and tears roses are supposed to have grown.” This early cultural touchstone inducted roses into the western cultural psyche as symbols of love, transcendence and resurrection.
Beyond the Greeks, Furr has been consistently inspired by JMW Turner, from his quietly brooding cloudscapes to his visions of British military prowess. “The first rose I painted, Yellow Rose, was inspired by Turner and was heavily influenced by the palette and feeling in “The Fighting Temeraire” in the National Gallery.” This unlikely influence is absolutely tangible in the curds of sunset yellow in the curling petals of Furr’s Yellow Rose and in the vibrant sky blue that surrounds them.
The sprawling cultural references to the rose have formed a foundation upon which Furr experiments with form, colour and shape. Roses as a motif appear in several of Furr’s works. ‘Pink Roses in a Pot 1993’; ‘Skull with Blue Rose 2014’, A blue rose appears in the Straubenzee painting of 2014 and latterly a plethora of roses appear in the foreground of the large format Serpentine Painting for the Dorchester in 2022.
The Rose Tondos series was created on exclusively circular canvases, exploring the relevance of the tondo form to contemporary art. The shape of the frame tracks the circumference of each unique bloom, centring the rose as an object worthy of admiration in itself. It’s as if Furr is echoing Gertrude Stein’s statement, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose…
Furr began the series of circular (tondo) paintings which took the rose as its main theme in 2011 with ‘Yellow Rose’. The first tondo ‘Jouissance’ explosion painting “The Emancipation of the Dissonance -Jouissance, State I 2011” occurred in the same year.
“My grandmother Mary Davies used to paint flowers in oils in a slightly botanical “Mary Delaney” style and it was she who actually introduced me to oil paint age 15 so I guess I must have inherited the interest in both flowers and oil painting from her.
When I paint these rose tondos, I isolate them on a sky to look almost as if they are floating so the sole focus is the flower itself, the petals and the centre. I wanted to invest them with strangeness in a way. A strange beauty. I suppose the feeling of direct blossoming in some way is prevalent and they are linked, in this, to my ‘Jouissance’ explosions ie. It is an object, or a collection of particles that is in the process of ‘opening up’ to us as the viewer and I find the circle format intensifies this focus.” – Christian Furr
In 2022 Furr created the diamond dust ‘New Rose’ edition which shows a more removed abstract / Warholian interpretation of this flower as subject matter.
Beyond the Greeks, Furr has been consistently inspired by JMW Turner, from his quietly brooding cloudscapes to his visions of British military prowess. “The first rose I painted, Yellow Rose, was inspired by Turner and was heavily influenced by the palette and feeling in “The Fighting Temeraire” in the National Gallery.” This unlikely influence is absolutely tangible in the curds of sunset yellow in the curling petals of Furr’s Yellow Rose and in the vibrant sky blue that surrounds them.
The sprawling cultural references to the rose have formed a foundation upon which Furr experiments with form, colour and shape. Roses as a motif appear in several of Furr’s works. ‘Pink Roses in a Pot 1993’; ‘Skull with Blue Rose 2014’, A blue rose appears in the Straubenzee painting of 2014 and latterly a plethora of roses appear in the foreground of the large format Serpentine Painting for the Dorchester in 2022.
The Rose Tondos series was created on exclusively circular canvases, exploring the relevance of the tondo form to contemporary art. The shape of the frame tracks the circumference of each unique bloom, centring the rose as an object worthy of admiration in itself. It’s as if Furr is echoing Gertrude Stein’s statement, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose…
Furr began the series of circular (tondo) paintings which took the rose as its main theme in 2011 with ‘Yellow Rose’. The first tondo ‘Jouissance’ explosion painting “The Emancipation of the Dissonance -Jouissance, State I 2011” occurred in the same year.
“My grandmother Mary Davies used to paint flowers in oils in a slightly botanical “Mary Delaney” style and it was she who actually introduced me to oil paint age 15 so I guess I must have inherited the interest in both flowers and oil painting from her.
When I paint these rose tondos, I isolate them on a sky to look almost as if they are floating so the sole focus is the flower itself, the petals and the centre. I wanted to invest them with strangeness in a way. A strange beauty. I suppose the feeling of direct blossoming in some way is prevalent and they are linked, in this, to my ‘Jouissance’ explosions ie. It is an object, or a collection of particles that is in the process of ‘opening up’ to us as the viewer and I find the circle format intensifies this focus.” – Christian Furr
In 2022 Furr created the diamond dust ‘New Rose’ edition which shows a more removed abstract / Warholian interpretation of this flower as subject matter.
