Mignon Steele paints to understand painting. This paradox compels her to search for an unfamiliar arrangement of colour and mark, a shifting expanse. She feels these current works are a reflection of who we might be in the world right now, further apart yet tethered to home. Her “night drawings”, contained and delicate meanderings under lamplight, reveal this domestic tethering. The larger works in Nearer By Far are informed by these drawings. In the studio, Mignon further describes how her recent paintings “unfold like vines and stand up by themselves”. She plays painterly tricks to find something new, “edging up to it … catching a glimpse, losing it in the bushes”. She enacts surface disturbances to ensnare “ubiquitous pre-verbal shapes and voids that skulk from recognition”.
At the beginning of a new sequence there are always a few works kicking around with early potential before an emergent sensibility presents itself. An obliteration phase occurs then where previous work is cancelled through active methods of applying paint and rebuilding the surface. A partial clean ground might emerge, aiming for a state of potential with something promising coming through.
There is an essential searching quality in Mignon’s practice. This depth of experience is like walking along a well-known bush track but discovering new elements each time, ambient sounds, shifts in weather and moisture levels, always pushing away from the habitual. In a conversation about art, our resolutions stutter. Mignon wonders, “We’re not in nature asking it to explain itself”. There’s an unknowable element here, and discourse and writing can’t meet it.
Based in the Illawarra, Mignon Steele’s recent exhibitions include shows in Melbourne and Sydney. She shifts effortlessly from her well-established painting practice to work as a colourist and mural painter with design duo Barnacle Studios.
- Melody Willis
