Laura White
The Painted Garden
24 February – 21 March 2017
Official Opening: Friday 3 March 6.00 – 7.45 pm
Laura White, Bird of Paradise, Oil on canvas, 120 x 90cm
In the winter of 2015, White’s first solo show Harvest opened in the Yering Station Art Gallery. Bringing together an accomplished range of still life oil paintings, Harvest offered up compositions of fruits and blossoming branches arranged in domestic settings that captured a fresh and nonetheless nostalgic affection for the bounty of the garden.
Principally a still life painter concerned with composition, balance, perspective and ellipsis, the botanical works of White’s ‘Painted Garden’ take her tableau into a lusher, closer, livelier glasshouse atmosphere. Freshly opened flowers and succulent foliage dominate, transforming the gallery into a conservatory in which everything grows as though magnified by the moisture in the air.
Perhaps because these works are immediately communicable to the senses, White finds it easy to get lost in the multiple layering, the translucent glazes, the waxy textural depth and the vibrant natural hues, and although she works within the realist tradition, these paintings, like the often serene and unsettling works of the hyperrealists, recognise a mysterious grandeur within nature which links them to the European Romantic tradition. Working creatively with plants opens a space for White in which it is possible to enter calm, meditative and altogether timeless states. These quiet, benighted and deeply creative moments enable White to enter into the drama of the plant: a connection between artist and subject is established, and this connection deepens her understanding of petals, leaves, stems and the ongoing play of light and shade. When calm and creative meditation informs the movement of the brush, the paint on the canvas soon begins to live and breathe.
Laura White, Echeveria Saturn, Oil on canvas, 60 x 60cm
Originally from Argentina, White moved to Australia with her family in 1976. The rediscovery of art later in life has propelled her into new arenas and opened new areas of enquiry. Following on from a course in interior design, White’s first steps in oil painting were largely self-guided and driven by curiosity and experimentation, after which she spent two years studying under Mary Petruccelli from Petruccelli Art Studio in Upper Beaconsfield. She currently works out of her studio in Berwick, Victoria.