Clare Thackway’s portraits are terrains of expression. Palette rich and scaled larger than life, they offer a talismanic positioning of gaze and features. Her fine-veined paint application pulses with life and the specificity of each face. The portraits are contemporary in their raw lighting while their physicality suggest Renaissance subjects. Also presented are a sequence of Thackway’s cropped fabric paintings playing with concepts of concealment and revelation. Clare has held recent solo shows at The Egg & Dart and Canberra Contemporary Art Space.
Adrian Baiada screeds translucent colour across the surface. These are landscapes as ethereal screens. Possibly offering the sublime of atmospheric pollution, the application of chemical paint on a surface replicates the qualities of the sun setting through a veneer of particulate dust. Adrian Baiada is an artist living in the Thirroul area.
Anna May Henry paints resilient and remarkable forms of Australian botany. Her purposefully focused subjects encourage a meditative softening, a contemplation between painterly qualities and the character of these specifically Australian plants. Qualities of the Australian landscape are embedded in these forms. Henry studies the colours evoked by the textures and tints of the foliage and the explosions of inflorescence you might find in a flowering gum or the complexity in the sandy yellows of a leucadendron. Anna May Henry is an emerging artist and graduate of the National Art School. .
- Melody Willis
Click the image below for the exhibition floorsheet.
Image: Adrian Baiada, Warning Letter, 2019, oil on board, 25.5 x 27cm