Robert Field

Artist in Mosaic

Mosaic as a medium for artistic expression has been to the forefront of my creative life for more than a decade. Prior to this I had painted in oils, acrylic and watercolour since the early 1970's.

From painting I turned my attention to mosaics in order to make replicas and reconstructions of Roman designs, but soon realised they had potential as a medium for creativity going far beyond the boundaries of craft work.

The inspiration for most of my original creative work comes from my love of pattern, both natural and man-made. I use a camera as a sketch book and from the resulting photographs take the design elements that I want to use. These then become the basis of my abstracts, whether in paint or in mosaic. Frequently recurring themes are water, trees, reflections and the built environment. I also like to work in a naturalistic manner as in the portraits of cats and the nude male figure. I have used unglazed ceramic as the main medium of my mosaics because I enjoy the colours and the absence of surface texture - the same reasons for my turning from oil paints to acrylic. Some work, however, needs more vibrant colouring and a surface texture which can be obtained from glazed ceramic and vitreous glass.