Marlin Fuller’s jazzy neo-expressionist paintings bring many of the ideals of Edward Burra forward to a new genera!ion. While the humour, the satire and the risk-taking dash of Burra are al evident in his work, he is his own master and remains very- much an original. At one level his art is a life-enhancing expression of physical energy at another ii is recondite. His characters are at once humorous and reflective – pale faced, sometimes almost cartoon-Iike, dazzled by a fizzling world, unsure of themselves, edgy with one another
Music is Fuller’s driving enthusiasm. Here as in so much of his work he reveals his ability to transpose to the eye things about music that the ear cannot hear Divas and dancers flirting with the spotlights, audiences rapt with anticipation before the curtain rises or costumes swirling in balletic animation. In his studio Fuller likes to paint to music. From the late sixties, when his work consisted of delicate surrealist pencil drawings, through the seventies as he developed a beautiful series of beautiful crayon fantasies, to the large canvases of the present day he has never lost his admiration for the recklessness of jazz, for its dangerous sense of letting-go that is now such a virile hallmark of his style.
This latest series of works on paper binds together the fine drawing techniques of his early style with the bright colours and daring dramatic tones of his later works, fusing past and present they are axial pictures, to be seen as both a synthesis and a new departure.
Alexander Waugh, June 2003