Carraig-na-gCat - Colour Chart, 2026 by Lucinda Burgess

Carraig-na-gCat – Colour Chart (2026) was realised during Lucinda Burgess’s residency at The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. The work consists of a plank of reclaimed wood cut into six horizontal batons, each marked with wax pencil. The timber functions simultaneously as support, record, and site, carrying visible traces of grain, knots, and weathering. The title refers to the coastal location of Carraig-na-gCat, grounding the work in a specific landscape. Rather than treating colour as a self-contained field, Burgess assigns one wax pencil colour to each piece of salvaged timber. The lines and blocks of pigment sit lightly on the surface, operating as both notation and test. Each coloured baton is divided into two surface conditions: one half burnished, the other matte. As light moves across the work, the two treatments reflect differently, producing subtle shifts in the perceived intensity and depth of the colour. Although each baton is marked with a single wax pencil, the viewer encounters it as unstable and variable. In this sense the “chart” functions less as a system of classification than as an attentive response to place and material. The reclaimed wood bears the marks of prior exposure and use. Its irregularities interrupt any rigid grid, allowing the character of the timber to influence the structure of the composition and the experience of colour itself. The work moves between painting, drawing, object, and field study. Within the context of Morphosis, Carraig-na-gCat – Colour Chart extends Burgess’s investigation into environmental agency and material change. Colour appears here not as a fixed property but as something contingent, encountered through surface, light, and circumstance. The work registers colour as something provisional and responsive, shaped by the conditions through which it is observed.