This latest body of work ‘Foliage’ stretches from across a year of relative stillness where I observed the changing seasons from my home in the Blackall Range North of Brisbane, Gubi Gubi Country and a short trip to the mid North Queensland coastal community of 1770, Bustard Bay, home of the of Gooreng Gooreng first nation people.
I hoped to create a space with this exhibition where the viewer could feel immersed in foliage and nature, something that seems to be an increasingly sought after experience, possibly from the limitations of recent restrictions but also because I sense a growing awareness that nature is not a given and needs to be valued and protected as it has been for milleniums by first nations people.
My practice has evolved into two methods. Both are an exploration of form, colour and movement through the play of light.
One involves secauteuring limbs then hoisting them back to my studio. I then hydrate and suspend them from the ceiling above my easel where soft light filters in across from high windows illuminating the dangling foliage. I proceed working oils across the canvas, sculpting and cutting in, wet into wet, creating form with brushstrokes of light muted blue, evocative of early morning light. Black wattle blossoms in late Spring, followed by flame tree blossoms at Christmas, then the heavy syrupy scented melaleuca of early Winter, the brief blast of zig-zag wattle with interludes of the almost permanently in bloom Banksia Integrifolia – these were the objects of my painterly exploration for this past year as they have been for the many proceeding.
The other involves capturing images of early morning light filtering down through the limbs of magnificent trees, a microsecond of light that defines the form and colour and movement of in this case the Corymbia Tessellaris with the impressive backdrop of a passing cumulus or cirrus cloud. I then work from these images in an almost cross hach, wet into wet process across the large canvas in a process that at times feels like hooking individual stitches into a massive tapestry. Judith Sinnamon 2021
Image: ‘Banksia Integrifolia #3’ 2021 oil on belgian linen 70 x 130 cm
