Once more and then again
Kate Lewis
9 Oct - 2 Nov 2024
This collection of paintings reflects time spent on Boon Wurrung/ Bunurong Country, the Victorian Peninsula. In collaboration with my environment, I layered paint on sheets of scrap metal and recycled materials found foraging the local tip and building sites. Discarded canvasses reincarnated to reveal a sense of the place they once called home.
Traversing the trails and painting ‘en plein air’ informed my time in the painting studio. Each painting is a memory of time spent in this liminal place, the bush between, where the bay and ocean come to meet on the Peninsula. These works attempt to reflect the essence of these special places rather than an explicit representation. Adding then subtracting, the paint hides and reveals the metal beneath and the harsh beauty of the discarded in contrast with the organic oily forms of the natural world as I see it.
Restricted by the gamble of found materials, each painting surface presents a new challenge in scale and shape. The peninsula landscape is rugged but sparkly, filled with ancient volcanic rock and tall canopies.
Memories from Flinders, Pulpit Rock, Black Rock Beaches, Cape Schanck, towering cypress trees.
Sandstone cliffs a natural divider of dynamic ecosystems between land and sea. Once more and then again is my exploration of colours and glimmers within the volcanic rock, arid sand dunes, crumbly sandstone, salty mist, tangled tea tree, saltbush, driftwood, burning sun and shimmering light that glistens through the oil paint and reflects off the ocean. Like me, the scrap metal is extrinsic yet found in this place.
In this country our landscape is full of emotion- vast beauty, dangerous terrain, it is deeply loved, forever mourned and fighting to survive.
- Kate Lewis
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