Paddocks as Sky

This painting, by its title, gives the viewer the first insight into the work. It is a painting that is at the outer reaches of perception, and is a work that dissolves form and content into a new construct that explores depths of meaning within and without the work. It requires an enquiring study and investigation to reveal its inner truth, and its outer layers of conceptual and aesthetic understanding.

Like all intelligent works of art, it releases its insights gradually and offers the opportunity for the viewer to take time to consider and reflect upon the inherent layers of meaning in the work. The painting is in the process of transforming nature and redefining itself, as it moves within transitional spaces commensurate with the artists desire and intention to reach new levels of awareness. This is achieved by extending her proactive mindset and trust in her creative abilities to achieve positive, optimistic, and new self-referential and far-reaching viewer outcomes.

A surface reading of the abstract painting can be understood on the simplest level as a landscape work. It is a work that literally and figuratively takes you within and without the earth and sky to newly conceived and evolving spaces beyond. Tracing this interactive journey we begin with the sprinkled yellowy/green paint liberally scattered about in the bottom half of the painting that gives a feeling of energised space, a feeling of light, water, oxygen, and even an optimal temperature, which are interestingly essential parallel conditions for seed germination. This feeds into the painting’s energy and movement in the exuberant colour palette as it ascends towards the centre and upper free-flowing areas of the work. I would best describe this as a process by which the ‘organisms’ in the work grow from the seeds below to the spatial relationships and regenerative aspects above.

The reading of the division between land and sky is dissolved, by land bleeding into the sky and sky bleeding into the land. The suggestion of a river seemingly dissolving out of sight into the sky, or the sky dissolving into the river, is more than counter-balanced throughout the middle section of the work by the rhythm and sway of the hills/mountains. They break down and evolve into semi-liquid composite states where form and matter take on new properties in the process of decay, transforming themselves into something else, resembling or suggesting an indeterminate and regenerative state of existence.

The painting is in a constant state of flux and impermanence. It is moving in an uncertain, enquiring and regenerative direction, but paradoxically a direction where the creative, colouristic visual language, is compositionally coherent and transformative. It unfurls its mysteries and inner workings in an accessible and insightful way, allowing the viewer to freely enter its internal spaces and identify the signposts on an exploratory and challenging time and space adventure. This is an exciting work, full of invention, and expertly expressed with a fertile creative imagination.