‘Rebecca Sitar’s practice is historically within the discipline of painting. Neither figurative nor purely abstract, Sitar’s practice has been described as ‘hermetic’ in its resistance to following any single orthodoxy. The paintings are self evidently process led. Their surfaces bear the trace of a post-Richter detachment and yet they also show things that seem profoundly personal. Particular, emblematic objects or incidents in paint are held up for inspection, requiring and eliciting a subjective response.
Sources for the work show a sympathy towards simplicity, the formal balance of a Japanese print, the figure/ground relationship in early Renaissance painting. They are also about continually testing the possibilities of the fluid matter of paint to arrive at a moment of ‘stillness’. ‘ Emma Hill
Rebecca Sitar (b. 1969, UK) is an artist based in the North-West of England. She completed a BA in Fine Art at Winchester School of Art and her MA in Fine Art (Painting) at Manchester School of Art.
Sitar has exhibited throughout the UK and in Europe. Her work is held in various collections including Deutsche Bank AG, London; DLA London and Manchester Art Gallery. She is a recipient of awards from Arts Council England, The British Council and was shortlisted for Abbey Fellowship in Painting, British School of Rome.
Selected recent exhibitions include On Waking : Jenny Eden, Christopher Hanlon, Harminder Judge, Gillian Lawler, Damien Meade, Karen Roulstone, Rebecca Sitar, Limerick City Art Gallery, Ireland (2025); ‘Flatland’, FG Gallery, Knutsford (2024); Mudlarks I & II Dan Roach &; Rebecca Sitar, Eagle Gallery EMH Arts, Cabinet Room, London (2021) /Oceans Apart, Manchester (2022); Beep Painting Biennial, Elysium Gallery, Swansea (2022).
Other notable shows include; John Moores Painting Exhibition Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool (2014); Beyond the Endgame: Abstract Painting in Manchester (2003), Manchester Art Gallery; Beginnings (2000), Whitworth Art Gallery &; Slow Burn: Meaning &; Vision in Contemporary British Abstract Painting Mead Gallery, (touring) (1998).
Solo shows include: Present &; Elsewhere II (2007), Hinterland (2004) &; Ritual (2001) at Emma Hill Fine Art, Eagle Gallery, London; Present &; Elsewhere I (2006), Galerija Karas, Zagreb; Mind Breaths (2000) Turnpike Gallery Leigh &; Lightness &; Weight Castlefield Gallery (1996).
Artists Statement
My practice centres on art and embodiment, ways of seeing and poetics of an ontological nature. Opening up to being in the world is integral to how the paintings evolve, through the experience of seeing, making and viewing. In these paintings, emblematic forms are situated in imaginary landscapes, with crossovers between cultures, nature, animals and minerals signposted but not described. Atmospheric conditions and meteorological phenomena are also compositionally suggested, distilled from my interest in deep time, matter and energy, from pagan animism to modern physics and literary interpretations.
The paintings also demonstrate a focus on materiality, where the slow movement and removal of paint and colour allude to metaphorical imagery during long periods of making. In this sense the work is a mirror of my decelerated experience – they take a time to produce and evolve through looking. My images require contemplative imagining to consider what is not said but left in the space of the painting, a direction I take from haiku poetry and interconnectedness (interbeing) within the practice of zen Buddhism.
Recent work has been made at a time when getting older and grieving has brought about a heightened sense of mortality, but also an acute awareness of being alive in a moment in time. For example, watching a shadow steadily move across a pebble reminds me of the unique interplay between the sun’s position and earth’s rotation in my act of looking. Of this kind of transformation, my paintings offer notions of rebirth in the widest possible sense. As energy moves, matter changes form, formlessness and doubt illuminates on the brevity of existence, which I cherish through a flicker; a small occurrence in the vastness of space.
Rebecca Sitar 2026
https://www.emmahilleagle.com/artists/rebecca-sitar/
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