Wash over me continues my response to a feeling I find hard to articulate. Small moments of awe, usually late in the afternoon. A feeling of breathing in the sky, and exhaling out the day; of the sky washing over me, engulfing me; of staring into the ocean from above. The paintings are not a representation of a site, but they are based in reality – with each painting made in response to a specific remembered experience of a place. They attempt to translate an emotional sense of the place through abstraction, layers of colour and considered brushstrokes.
With deep gratitude I acknowledge these works have been made in response to experiences on Turrbal, Yuggera, Bundjalung, Yaegl and Gumbaynggirr Countries.
Bridie Gillman, 2022
About the artist
Reminiscent of the early 20th century action painters, Bridie Gillman’s mark-making is an intuitive response to the memories and emotions evoked from her cross-cultural experiences. Initially inspired by her childhood in Indonesia, the now Brisbane-based artist’s practice has evolved to consider more broadly concepts of place, reactions to the environments through which she has travelled, her connection to land as a non-indigenous Australian and the intangibility of memory.
Spontaneous and physical, Gillman’s compositions capture the tension between reminiscence and experience, wanderlust and belonging, combining instinctive use of colour and gesture with literal, poetic titles that hint at sentiments beyond.
Bridie Gillman is an alumna of Queensland College of Art, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art (First Class Honours) in 2013. In 2019 she was a finalist of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, winner of the Moreton Bay Art Award and finalist in the Fisher’s Ghost Award at Campbelltown Art Centre. She is a past finalist of the Redland Art Award, the MAMA National Photography Prize, Murray Art Museum Albury, and PRIZENOPRIZE, Gold Coast (all 2016), as well as the 2013 GAS Graduate Art Show, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally including the Museum of Brisbane, Metro Arts, Brisbane, The Walls, Gold Coast, Blindside, Melbourne and Run Amok, George Town, Malaysia and she has undertaken residencies at Rimbun Dahan, George Town, Malaysia, in 2015 and Ketjil Bergerak, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2014.
Carrie McCarthy
Image: A grey line in the sky 2022, oil on linen, 183 x 213 cm.
