TRAFFIC JAM GALLERIES KATHERINE WOOD AND REBECCA PIERCE

 https://www.sydneyartsguide.com.au/traffic-jam-galleries-katherine-wood-and-rebecca-pierce/#more-96815


TRAFFIC JAM GALLERIES : KATHERINE WOOD AND REBECCA PIERCE

19 OCTOBER 2022 
Rebecca Pierce ‘When The Genies Emerge From The Bottle’. Acrylic paint and ink oil sticks on charcoal on resin on canvas

Currently showing at Traffic Jam Galleries are two vibrant, exciting and contrasting solo exhibitions. 

Katherine Wood’s latest exhibition is a superb series of works based on STILLNESS, meditation and nature. Wood paints in oil and mixed media for this exhibition. It is reflective, pondering the inner self and awareness of nature and who we are and how we deal with life experiences and keep persevering and growing. Who are we really inside to ourselves? Is it enough? The works are not of a specific place or time but express a tumultuous general energy.

The works are full of fragile yet volcanic beauty, broiling turbulent landscapes caught between sea and sky. It is as if we are caught in the middle and taken out of ourselves, given a space to dis/connect and then reconnect.

The textured sea shore is often delicately portrayed in contrast to the tempestuous skies. Blue is the main colour throughout, but there are also tempestuous yellows and reds and a calmer pale blue or grey. 

In these stunning, atmospheric paintings, trees, people and animals are portrayed as tiny, seemingly insignificant points of reference. There is even a Lone Wolf . 

Rebecca Pierce ‘s exhibition, entitled ALL IS NOT AS IT APPEARS is bold and striking. It consists of quite a large number of works, most of which are close up portraits with large eyes staring directly at the viewer – are they who they seem to be? A few appear to wear crowns, or birds or fish on their heads and one has blue butterflies. 

Some of the works are different though. For example, Self Portrait With Progressive Ptosis – is pale and white, with a long neck and hooded green eyes. 

Fractured looks a bit like a screen print (although it is created in acrylics and charcoal). The composition is split down the middle, one side being dark, depicting a black face with pink spots, the other a far more ‘ordinary’ skin colour with black hair. Is it two sides of the one person?

Twenty Five Hours is abstract and mask like in its blacks, blue and purples in dynamic curved shapes. Possibly one could say there is an influence by Matisse?

The Talking Tree is a vivid explosion of colour and texture in bright colours (oranges, reds, pinks etc). The composition is energetically dissected by an aqua and grey slither thrusting vertically and diagonally in the centre of the work. 

In Communication Breakdown, dominated by grey tones, the barbed wire fence monopolises most of the work, with the rabbits and blood hauntingly depicted. There is a messy pile of waste and other dead animals right at the bottom forefront of the painting.  

Magic is another of Pierce’s wonderful flower and butterfly paintings,  this one in blue and green tones. It has a strong coiling vertical composition as if the plants were floating in the water and see if you can count the number of yellow and orange delicate butterflies .

The exhibition runs at the Traffic Jam Galleries until 31 October 2022

Featured image : Katherine Wood ‘Thundering Silence oil and mixed media on canvas

https://trafficjamgalleries.com/

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