Experiencing colour can be a fleeting moment. In these paintings Marisa Purcell hopes to catch the feeling before it disappears – before it gets lost in the noise of everything else. Those moments when we lie under a tree to look at the sky, or the branches – the lazy morning when a glimpse of light appears through the window or the double-take to check if you’ve seen something correctly in your periphery. These paintings decode the process and help to separate what the artist thinks she sees. She notes:
The work in ‘Outside In’ continues my interest in layering fields of transparent colour to create an uncertain optical realism. What is coming forward, what is receding? What is flat and what has space? The slightly uncomfortable experience of not being able to focus wholeheartedly on an image is relieved by the clarity of the frame, the painting’s edge, where an attempt at certainty exists in the uncertain.
Marisa Purcell holds a Master of Visual Arts from Sydney College of Arts, University of Sydney and a Master of Art Administration from the University of New South Wales, College of Fine Art. Her work is exhibited and collected nationally and internationally and she has received numerous awards, residencies and fellowships. In 2021 she was a finalist in the Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Image: Last Light, 2021, acrylic on linen, 153 x 137 cm.
