Angela Wooden
Toongabbie Christian College
SUBURBAN ASTRONOMY
Painting
Acrylic paint on wood
My body of work was inspired by noticing the absence of visible stars in my environment and how this turns the gaze to the horizon, where street lights shine. This long stretch of continuous lights is represented in the length of my work. The details and placement of the lights are purposeful expressions of the reference photos I took.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Fred Williams; Mark Rothko; Gustave Courbet, View of Ornans.
Marker's Commentary
Almost appearing as a long incision, Suburban Astronomy is comprised of six acrylic paintings, assembled in an extended narrow panel. A soft-edged velvet black background frames the vista of a suburban night scene, depicted through the representation of lights. Reflecting the distant scene visible from the student’s own window and painted from a high vantage point, the work provides a vast panorama of urban life below. The forms of suburbia have been painted with confidence and freedom while being honed to appear as small blobs of paint amidst a shroud of black. Splotches and daubs denote suburban building lights and streetlights that line roads and freeways. Different sized dabs of pure white are used as the nucleus of the light source. Some sit within narrow fields of colour, creating a light haze, others are applied directly on the saturated black background and have more clarity. In one section, orange streetlights illuminate parts of the street below while an aeroplane looms into view, seen frontally with lights flashing. Collectively this expansive nightscape melds abstraction and representation. In deploying abstract techniques, the emphasis shifts from being purely visual to that of the felt experience. This painting draws on moments of reflection and encounter. Within this nocturnal scene, with its dark rooms and blinking lights, the audience can dwell on the city stories and imagine how they represent us. By walking the line of this scroll painting, the audience traverses the space, viewing each section of the cityscape, bit by bit, partaking in a journey, linking the different component parts of the work together. Night evokes a sense of theatre and spectacle that emanates from the lights twinkling, emerging and diminishing into the dark. While being restrained through the diminutive height and an economy of medium and visual elements, the painting makes a grand and powerful statement. While it denotes one moment in time, the broader effect is one of clutching an immense expanse of time as it transcends boundaries of past and future. The painting has beauty in its minimalism.