Oil on Canvas, image size: 75x50cm
‘Resilience’ grew directly from the ‘Kanangra’ study and from months of walking the same path along Blackwattle Bay, looking across to the remnant industrial landscape of Rozelle Bay. Repeated observation changes and sometimes simplifies what you see and what remains is the thing that kept drawing you back. For this stretch of water, that was the sense of monuments at rest: structures that carry history without advertising it.
The larger canvas gave me room to be more deliberate about how those forms sit against the water and sky. I wanted the composition to feel settled with the industrial past in its current state of quiet, viewed at a distance in low, horizontal light. The brushwork loosens as it moves away from the structures and into the water and atmosphere, where I wanted light to do more work than paint.
Mark Naismith-Beeley, 2026.