I thought I would run you through my ideas for my first solo show by sharing an excerpt of the artist talk for the opening evening.
In a way, I'm presenting these paintings to you as things that have been already made, things are already in existence & put together, ordered into an object, a curation of pigments and canvas, decisions about paints and board. I put them together in response to the effect the Created ocean has on humankind.
The ocean makes us look out, look down, look around. It stretches our eyes to horizon lines, and relaxes our mind as we look at the drifting waves, the nonstop motion of the surface of the sea. It brings fear. It brings doubt. It brings hope. It brings connection. It brings reflection. The ocean is both mighty and gentle. Tender and approachable yet so much more infinite and glorious than we can comprehend. The ocean can hold us while we float, and yet we can move between and through it. Waves breathe and contract. The tides dance with the moon.
The ocean might divide continents, but it is also the great equalizer and uniter. The same body of water surrounds every shore of every island. It is one giant body of water the whole globe around and when we step into its shallows we are connected to something far grander than we can even imagine or comprehend. My family lived in Papua New Guinea for 3 years (Solwara, the title of this show, means ocean in tok Pisin) and while there I used to feel so refreshed after taking the long way home by the coast and even though the port was so different from my own memories of coast along Australia's south west, I felt connected to my family hundreds of kilometres away knowing that they too were looking out to sea. It made me think of all the people looking out to sea and how we weren't really all that different from eachother, everyone in their own heads ruminating on their own longings or troubles. I thought of my family line and how a couple of generations ago my ancestors would be waiting for their fishermen to return home. And what if they didn't return? And today, how many people hop in boats to leave their home at war and look out to sea to think - will we return? I like to think of everyone that looked out to sea in decades past, and how many people will look out to sea tomorrow. Humans are not all so different from one another in our experiences, so many intersections of life and death, home and voyage, searching and seeking, hope and fear, that come together in the sea.
I love how the ocean encourages reflection and a revision of perspective. And I hope that you might find this collection of ocean paintings helpful for your own contemplation.
So, there you have it. An insight into my brain. Would love to hear about what you think about when you look at the sea, and what the vast expanse means to you. How does the sea change you?
Thanks for being here.
With hope,
Nicole
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