...and the world flew off its axis
Last week I saw a colourful suite of paintings by Elizabeth Newman at Darren Knight Gallery in Sydney in an exhibition titled ...and the world flew off its axis. The show consisted of larger sized paintings on linen that emanated atmospheric shades of pale pinks and blues, and smaller works on cardboard boxes that required intimate inspection. Patches of hastily applied colour and shape were untethered to any kind of compositional axis; were left afloat in their painterly improvisation. I guess the same could be said for Newman's ideas: they were incredibly subtle and it took some time for me to warm to the complex and enigmatic quality of her work.
The numerous text-based paintings in the show didn't necessarily steer me towards understanding Newman's references either, but instead contributed to a sense of lyricism. These texts gently hinted at the demise of the 'age of humanity', with one ocean green coloured watercolour reading 'a dozen dead oceans.' Further googling on the train back to Central Station revealed that this is a line from a Bob Dylan song that was inspired by a feeling of hopelessness in the midst of tragic world events. The 'dead oceans' text was shown next to another painting that included two slivered geodes stuck to a linen canvas. The geodes floated on top of an amorphously shaped area of foreboding dark grey as though they were the precious remains of a collapsed world. A painter's palette is used as a found object in a similar vein in another painting with a fog-like patch of white paint stretching outwards from behind it. Perhaps when the world flies off its axis all there is left is a painterly haze and evidence of artistic process.
It gradually became apparent to me that the intimacy of Newman's paintings can be felt by tuning into their subtle details. Certain marks and movements with paint and colour suggest some of her thinking; where you can tell that she's put the brush down at one point and then recommenced painting again later, or perhaps where she's given up on an idea altogether and left it unfinished and exposed. I spent time focusing on areas of her canvases that were untouched, or edges that were painted in an entirely different colour to the rest of the scheme. After seeing the exhibition I was left thinking about the emotional affects of colour and texture. Looking over photos I've taken this year, I've been really attracted to particular colours: warmer shades of red, orange, yellow and pink. Perhaps my attraction to these colours correlates with the various states of desire, hope and introspection that I've experienced this year. I might attach these colourful images to a separate blog post.
