CANVAS/WOOD PANEL

Coombs paintings combine a playful yet controlled spontaneity with a disciplined precision of execution. A planar, geometric approach reduces these abstract works to fundamentals, a language of colour and shape. References to popular culture and art history appear but do not dominate the visual experience.

His rigorous and deliberate approach to colour animates and enhances the work. There is an alchemy to his use of colour and form that is almost mathematical. Space and depth are suggested convincingly despite the flatness of the shapes.

Many Modernist traditions are apparent in his work, Cubism in particular, and recall the aesthetic of the 1920’s German expressionist film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, as well as the jazz-influenced paintings of the American artist, Stuart Davis.