In recent journeys to the ‘Top End’ and ‘Red Centre”, this country revealed some of its majesty to me.

The breadth of my work in this exhibition is my sensual and intuitive responses to this unearthed material world.  Bright intense light, the rich layered textures of rock-face and desert, sinuous winding of lush waterways, the nuanced colour, the flight and movement of birds and animals, seasonal change as well as its deep spiritual and metaphysical symbolism all are referenced here.

The land’s layered timelessness is unearthed.

Working both en plein-air as well as in studio practice, using sweeping gestural movements, experimental colour and textural depth transpose time and place into new statements.

In observing tides, weather patterns and nature’s cycles I experience personal Zen moments of detachment.  These then release intuitive calligraphic marks.  Light shifts, structures dissolve. The emotional presence of the landscape is unearthed.  Tensions are created between sweeping shafts of light and diffused form of the solidity and the ethereal. The arc creates a fluid connectivity between one work and the next.

I have travelled widely over many years, my sketchbooks and camera are companions that back in the studio guide my initial transpositions from memory to creation.  Experiment and representation lead to abstraction and symbolism.

As pigments were originally earth-sourced, I acknowledge the land in some of my choice of colour  (and inclusion of desert sand), the light of sky and reflection shimmer in intensity, liquidity of line run with river and water, flight paths are symbolic metaphors of the earth as a source of life and energy.

Within this new exhibition I share my personal journey.

While many places are referenced: Kakadu and Litchfield National Parks, Katherine, Darwin and The Tiwi Islands, Alice Springs, Kings Canyon, Kata Tjuta and Uluru, this is no travelogue but a transposition of place, an abstraction seeking the essence.

‘Unearthed’ therefore speaks of the interface between internal and external dialogues. ~ Judy Trick, May 2024.