Katherine Edwards McCubbin - Study for Floral Baroque no. 4

GALLERY BY APPOINTMENT & Open: Wed 12-3pm; Thurs-Sat 11am - 3pm

A face, ethereal and evocative, emerges from an atmospheric swirl of brushstrokes. A flower blooms as a constellation in the foreground, and the sense of peering into both a microscope, and upon the entire surface of the planet, merges into a playful symphony of spots, dots, & daubs. Welcome to the world of Katherine Edwards McCubbin. A mid-career artist making her emphatic statement, in her own very personal visual language.Katherine’s pictures combine, gestural marks of reduced colour, into mythic apparitions, a product of a lifetime of dreaming and exploring the world of interiors, and the broader world of exteriors. Within that exchange of spaces, she has found the ethereal, the ambiguities, and the suggestion of so much more.

Description

The title of this show “Alchemy”, continues Katherine’s preoccupation with water (childhood memories of Sydney harbour), natural history and how these experiences can transmute into magical visions. Italy’s Baroque water fountains and sculptures have been the catalyst for the subject matter of these paintings, the artist travelling there when possible to draw and later transform these studies into paintings in her St Kilda East studio. She has created a symbolic visual language, a mark-making short-hand of outlines and apparitions, via oil paint, across the canvas surface – spots, spirals, faces, flowers, snails, shells, bow-ties and ribbons – appear atomised or vaporised in a swirling vortex of texture and form.