Artist Statement
”Drawing on the compression and expansion of energy in the natural world via botanical lexicons, this body of work creates a painterly language for describing the somatic and embodied experience of painting. It investigates the concept of the growing world - our experience and representation of it.
The paintings explore the phenomenon of being sensorially immersed in nature, amongst flowers, and how the combined processes of painting and remembering might create a parallel temporal experience, which becomes embedded and embodied in the final image. Together the works strive to suggest a continual movement through both actual and imagined space, both within and between paintings and within and between artist and subject matter.
The work strives to sit in a place where the primal force of growth and human engagement with visual technologies intersect. My process involves curating photographic images of natural phenomena through a process of digital manipulation that creates complex imagery of new biomorphic forms, which take the place of preparatory drawings. By intervening in the traditional process of painting from observation, with a re-route through digital manipulation, an intersection is created at which new subject matter emerges, changing the trajectory of the image through the temporal sensorial process of painting
This exhibition brings together 3 separate but closely linked bodies of work, focused on an appreciation of growth, movement and change in the living world. The first body of work, competed in 2020, responds to the sensory experience of visiting Singapore’s expansive ‘city in a garden’. This experience was brought home to the studio for a long contemplative period in lockdown, exploring surreal biomorphic and exotic orchids forms. The second body of work, completed in 2021, finds this exotic quality within the Australian landscape and hones in on the idea of a compression and expansion of energy within the works. The final body of work comprised of monoprints, completed during the storms and blackouts of 2021, reflect the desire to highlight a narrow focus of smaller inconsequential native orchids. The smaller scale of the works speaks to a more intimate relationship to the subject, during a period of introspection.” - Madeleine Palmer
www.palmer.info/
@madeleine_palmer
madeleine.r.palmer@gmail.com
Madeleine Palmer
Biomorph
The Long Gallery
16th June - 10th July 2022
OPENING NIGHT
Friday 17th June 2022
6:30pm - 8:30pm
The Long Gallery
Nibbles provided
Drinks available at bar prices
Entry is Free, but Booking Required
GUEST SPEAKER - SARAH TOMASETTI
Lilac Larkspur I, Madeleine Palmer, oil on canvas, 122 x 92 cm
Compression and Expansion III, Madeleine Palmer