This iteration of Art in Your Community features artist Michelle Teear, a contemporary painter working in egg tempera using classical paint making techniques.
Her practice is researched based and her works draw from a deep desire to connect with the natural landscape, achieved by regularly travelling, and living in remote regions as an immersive experience. While travelling Michelle conducts en plein air studies in the outdoors and sources found natural pigments from which to make natural paint.
This survey of approximately 50 works on paper have not previously been shown and are a response to the landscape of Queensland’s Central West region, they were developed on a recent trip and painted whilst immersed within the landscape.
From the artist: The central west of Queensland is the head of our incredible in-land water system. We delayed our trip by a month due to flooding at the start of the 'dry' season. When the rains come the roads are unsurpassable and you'll clock quite a fine if you get caught on one. The rain runs down through the lower corner of the three states and into the Lake Eyre basin. We found ourselves on floodplains where you could see the flood lines marked as an abrupt end to the meadows of wild daisies that perfumed the air with honey. The flat open land tells its history in the channels and rises of the landscape. I found myself in a wide-open space chasing a potential mirage on the horizon of a flat-topped mountain. Mesas exist only here and in the United States, states my paper map of the Diamantina region. These monoliths that stand over this land as an abruption, sitting in a quiet survey of the region in a test of endurance.
Michelle is represented by Straitjacket Gallery Newcastle, NSW.
Image: Michelle Teear, View from Mount Slowcombe 2022, gouache on cotton rag paper.
Free