Rather than ‘framing Nature’, Elaine Green’s work has always resonated the 19th century Romantic notion of elevating landscape painting to a metaphysical level. It is seen as the extension of an inner sense of being, a place where Nature and Self are fused. The difference between the observer and the observed is subsumed in a boundless luminosity. ‘Like all artists I am constantly seeking the light,’ she reflects. ‘The troposphere, constantly in motion, provides never-ending inspiration and challenges to capture that light and the changing moods of the environment.’
Only very recently Elaine moved her abode away from the northern NSW region with its early morning vistas of mist-enshrouded forests and peaks. She now lives in Stanley, a little fishing village on the North West coast of Tasmania. Elaine divulges that the relocation to Stanley was partly prompted by the cooler clime, neither she nor her husband being fans of heat and humidity. ‘We’d had a couple of days holidaying there while exploring Tassie. I’d walked to the beach one morning and suddenly wanted to stay forever!’
‘The landscape I now see from my studio is simplified and the sky vast. Cloud-filled skyscapes are increasingly becoming the focus of my painting. It is the fleeting, ephemeral nature of the clouds that capture my attention,’ she offers. ‘On the one hand they remind me of the passing of time and on the other they keep me fixed in the ‘here and now’, savoring the moment. When I was a child I would look at clouds and see faces and animals as everyone does, but now I see the sky in terms of brushstrokes. Clouds are like layers of paint; like layers of the soul. I think my works are more about those feelings I get from experiencing big skies rather than actual representations of them.’
‘Since moving to Tasmania, I feel I am painting more slowly, spending more time with each painting, pushing the boundaries, waiting and hoping for the work to present me with an emotive narrative,’ Elaine continues. ‘Paint merges, creating new realities. It is the alchemical properties of blending oil paint that I love.’ She explains that the reverie of witnessing Nature’s atmospheric poetry can never be adequately expressed in a formal tradition. It is more about the impulse to surrender to the creative flux of the imagination.
Elaine is constantly responding to a work’s promptings, allowing her brush gestures rather than analytical precepts to govern the emerging image. It is a thoroughly intuitive process. A certain area will engage her attention and its presence will then be augmented through scumbles of brush and palette knife markings. Chiaroscuro contrasts of light and shadow are softened by the technique of sfumato. Derived from the Italian word fumo, meaning ‘smoke’, the tones are so subtly blended that the transitions between them become imperceptible. There are no defined edges or shapes, everything is mutable – coalescing and dissolving in emulation of the cloud formations that inspired the painting. The viewer enters a lofty, rarefied realm. Elaine’s art offers transcendence; a state of alignment with evanescent Nature that is far from the everyday world of routine and objectivity.
JACQUELINE HOUGHTON
Elaine Green holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts Degree, SCU, Lismore 2015 and a Diploma of Fine Arts, Murwillumbah TAFE 2011. Over the past few years she has received a number of awards and been a finalist in a great number of prizes including: Highly Commended, Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, NSW 2019; Tattersalls Landscape Prize, Qld 2019, 2018; finalist, Milburn Art Prize, Brisbane Institute of Art, Qld 2019; Rotary Art Spectacular, Brisbane, Qld 2019; Brisbane Art Prize, Qld 2016; Waverley Art Prize, NSW 2016; Camberwell Art Prize, Vic 2016; Lethbridge 10000, Qld 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014; Rotary Art Prize, Qld 2016; Border Art Prize, NSW 2016, 2014, 2012; Eutick Memorial Still Life Award, NSW 2015; Curator’s Choice, Byron Arts Classic 2015; She Art Prize, Walker Gallery, Vic 2015; Sunshine Coast Art Prize, Qld 2014; The Kaske Award for Painting, SCU 2013; Len Fox Art Award, Vic. 2013, 2011; First Prize, Ocean Shores Art Expo, NSW 2013; Wilson Art Award, Lismore NSW 2013, 2012.
Receive e-mail updates on our exhibitions, events and more
Subscribe Now