Artist Database

Trevor Coleman studied first at the Johannesburg Technical College of Art and later at the Central School of Art and Design in London. He is well known as a colourist and revels in the spatial dynamics and optical vibrations that result from juxtapositions and layering of intense, saturated colour. In the 1960s, experimentation with acrylic paint produced hard-edged ‘scientific’ abstracts, frequently on geometrically complex, shaped, canvases. Extensive travel in Africa, the Mediterranean, and India produced vibrant flat fields of vivid reds, hot oranges, fuchsia pinks, azure blues and emerald greens in the semi-figurative ‘picture postcard’ compositions familiar to Johannesburg gallery-goers in the 1970s and beyond. More recently, Coleman has revisited his early interest in anthropology and archaeology, with soft-edged, gently atmospheric abstracts that suggest layer upon layer of cultural history and the passage of deep geological time.