It’s always exciting to see an artist’s new work, especially an artist returning from a residency with energy and ideas. Last October, New Blood artist Sara Willett spent a month at Tao Huan Tan, Anhui Province, China. Her days were filled with morning walks beside the river followed by exercising on the waterfront, before time spent making, time spent painting. In her paintings, we often witness the slow building of layers, one upon another, giving the work a contemplative quality that allows the viewer to get lost in pictorial space. As a viewer, one never tires of looking; the paintings are inherently generous, providing points of discourse and discussion. Given this, it is no surprise that her time in China also involved a chat with renowned poet and art writer John Yau. It is just one conversation, but evocative of the generative possibilities in Willett’s art.
If Willett’s residency in China was a rare experience, she is far from the only New Blood artist whose work shows the influence of contemporary Chinese art. New to New Blood is Zhize Lv, whose works draw from the tradition of Chinese ink painting to create compelling images of nature that are tranquil and strange, natural yet heightened. The more we look, the ordinary becomes striking. Rather than inviting us in, the paintings carry an artificiality that makes us take a step back and asks us to consider our relationship with nature, art, and our surroundings.
In common, both Willett and Lv give back to the viewer, their paintings are prompts for thoughts and dialogue, on art and beyond. This is a quality shared by two of our Masters artists, Sammi Mak and Kyle Noble. For Mak, painting is a stand-in for language, a form of visual communication that speaks to our place in the world, the universe. Paint bleeds into the canvas and broad strokes open up the landscape-like spaces. As viewers, we are captivated, constantly searching. In common with Mak, Noble spent time living in Hong Kong and while his paintings are formally different to other artists cited in this newsletter, he speaks of the Chinese landscape painting tradition that he experienced in both Hong Kong and Taiwan. His paintings are stylised and exaggerated: we are aware that we are viewing a representation of reality rather than reality itself. As with the other artists in this newsletter, when we leave, details lodge in our minds, allowing the conversation to continue beyond the painted surface.