Although Robin Thomas says that her first instruction in drawing was "put down what you see", it is more often what she remembers that astounds us most.
It is this memory for delicate and intrinsic detail that holds us spellbound in front of her enchanting coloured ink drawings.
To have called her latest collection "Forgotten Games" indicates Robin's whimsical ways of understanding the contradictions that exist in nature and in the human spirit. These new works are not big in scale, nor big in the contemporary art sense, but the breadth of vision is large. They have wonderfully subtle, intricate and mysterious stories to tell which grow in dimension the longer one gazes at them.
Robin grew up in Western Australia, spending her childhood in the isolated world of a wheat belt farm and her drawings are an extension of that world. These drawings have been her companions ever since, and she has worked over the years to resolve puzzles of light and colour and space and pattern.
She has had 'one person shows' with the ABC in Perth, at the Macquarie Gallery in Canberra, and at The Robb Street Gallery, Bairnsdale, Victoria, and has been involved in collective shows with Macquarie Galleries, Sydney, Gallery Huntly, Canberra, and in the inaugural exhibition at The Robb Street Gallery.
Robin Thomas never looks at just one thing; she is always looking at the relation between things and herself. Her works seem to encourage us to find ourselves in her past or in some puzzling ways in that of our own. She is ever refining images, making them richer and more intense, ever collecting things from past and present and weaving them into themes which embody particular ways of seeing.
Drawing directly onto paper with pen and coloured inks she starts at one corner and works across the page putting down objects that please her as they come into her mind or her view.
These thoughts and images have, in the past, dealt mostly with familiar scenes where gardens, birds, ducks and cats are portrayed with subtlety and love, and depicted in magical intricate spaces.
Robin's new works have lost none of the earlier magic but they have changed. These new works still display wonderful colour, creating delicate microcosms of light and shade whilst weaving stories about children at play. The geese, ducks, pigeons and cats are still there, amongst the greens and oranges and vivid indigo of hydrangeas, geraniums, daisies, umbrellas, masks, feathers and all manner of other important possessions, but the latest pictures have much to do with ceremony and ritual and precious moments in time
In some ways Robin's new works take their place with the works of other Australian artists like Thea Proctor, May Gibbs and Eileen Mayo. There are certainly similarities with these artists in the area of subject matter and decorative pattern making, but Robin's remarkable pen and ink drawings with their brilliant warm glow of light and colour remain unique.
Colleen Hinder
Lecturer, Visual Arts
Australian Catholic University
Review for Forgotten Games at The Robb Street Gallery, 7 December - 17 December 1991
Currently Robin's works are on display at Copington Green, Canberra. Robin is represented by The Robb Street Gallery and "Heaven By A String" is currently on tour.