Riely Byrnes
Kincumber High School
DISTILLATIONS OF MEMORY AND PLACE
Painting
Acrylic on plywood
Taking a reductionist approach, my body of work, Distillations of Memory and Place, is a series of abstract landscapes representing the essential elements of line, colour, form and texture of the natural environment. I was inspired by the coastal environment that surrounds me. My intent was to express the organic lines and textures that occur naturally by identifying the crucial elements of the environment. In developing my work I realised that perhaps they are not abstract landscapes at all, as they represent the landscape as it truly is, just distilled.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: John Olsen, Jenny Sages, Emma Walker.
Marker's Commentary
This collection of irregular shaped forms represents a marriage of landscape and abstraction. With their extraordinary textural variety, they offer an imaginative approximation of river, waterhole, hill contour, tidal flow or encrusted rock surface. The vignettes act as macro or micro studies yet ultimately infer an intuitive response to the subject. Loose, topographic-inspired landscapes intentionally blur the line between form and space. Rich colour forms a stratum over which white paint has been poured, dragged, painted and applied. There is a huge variety of texture and surface treatment here; from marbling to coiled relief, incised lines, rumbling fractures and repeated dot motifs. Larger patches of colour remain fixed, overlaid in small parts by ribbons of white which read as contours or tidal marks. In some pieces there is a complete absence of colour as if the land has been bleached by sun or age. At times, the white blends or resists the pentimenti below as if in a state of flux. The overlay of white builds rhythm and creates optical respite from the rich colour and texture. Yet tensions of chaos and order are conjured. Each work is a picture unto itself, yet there is great beauty in the collective series which presents as a unified, coherent whole evoking specific and collective memory of place.