Elizabeth Mead

Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2024 - Finalist

_{[Image courtesy of the artist. Photo by Lynnette Passeri]}

Artist Statement

Traditional and epic - with the composition evoking  a Greek chorus of trees standing witness on the Northwest Slopes and Plains of New South Wales.  

The chosen limited palette of colours captures the Australian heat and harsh dry winds. Almost spartan in design, surrounding the simple centre of field, the tree shapes seem hastily drawn, dabbed, scribbled and stretched with knife and brush marks to give the work a modern feel.  

The scene was captured late last year when I was exhibiting in the town of Tamworth, New South Wales. 

Creamy, thick texture of paint is often scratched away and then washed over to capture the shifting, archetypally Australian shapes and colours. These coloured base notes are then punctuated with dabs of sunlight and bolder streaks of shadow.  

There is a resilience in the native flora and land structure that informs the work; it might appear fragile in passing but the fact that the bush has withstood fire, drought, flood and now increasing assault from a changing climate, for tens of thousands of years, this fragility belies enormous strength.    

I respond to these multi-layered patterns as if translating an epic poem until the moment when I know the final composition can rest and the hero once again return home.  

As such, the work has movement yet stillness, damage yet recovery; in short, a resilient psyche unique to this ancient land and a privilege to witness. Like an epic poem, the hero’s journey is witnessed and reported on by the chorus.