"Susie Sierra: New Works"
2002-12-09 until 2002-12-22
Susie Sierra Gallery
Marrickville, NS, AU Australia

Imagination is the essence of creativity, skill and technique the cornerstone of its application. Through both these means artists endeavour to express themselves from the inside out. Many eloquent things can be said about an artist and their work but as artists the process is a simple one - they paint what moves them and hope that it will move others. A work of art carries within it the energy with which it was produced, whether this is inspired beauty or contained rage.

Truly great works of art throb with palpable life like De Koonings' abstract works that open like doorways into endless fields of light. True art can never really be possessed, the object perhaps but not the art - that can only be experienced through the emotions where a relationship occurs between the inspired work and the viewer. Thank God for our Galleries and Museums and the generous patrons who support these glorious institutions where such relationships are encouraged to flourish. As Byron said " to have joy one must share it." So too for art to be realized it must also be shared.

For nearly ten years now Susie Sierra has explored the theme of nature, most specifically, flowers. A flower emits profound silence and draws intimately upon the emotions. Through their short, sweet existence they reveal the mutability of life in its many facets. In the face of nature, in its most refined, decaying and delicate state, one can traverse regions of profound subjectivity. Abstract art has always held the throne for themes of the deepest and most spiritual meanings but the deepest feeling is an abstraction in its own right. Consider the possibility that the abstraction lies not in the work so much as in the response to it.

Few artists choose - most are chosen, for who would wittingly choose such a lonely existence?

Heightened sensitivities often necessitate the quiet withdrawal from the mainstream of life and so an artist lives in the margins, always the observer, seeing deep and far.

Inspired by Tim Maguire's loose-wash flower paintings, Sierra has taken this post-renaissance theme and produced these highly detailed works, reflecting the attention to detail for which the Dutch painters of the 17th century were so renowned. The intimacy expressed through the inclusion of the small and delicate flowers reveal the relationship between beauty, light and the transient state in which we all exist. Our modern world increasingly reveals to us just how real this is.

Transposed into a contemporary context but still retaining the feeling of the past, each work is an invitation to contemplation. Here we find a salute to history and in these modern times where efficiency and minimalism are so questionably admired it is refreshing to discover an artist with such highly developed technical skills, imagination and intellect. This is definitely an artist to invest in for the future.

- John Bradley
(art critic and judge)

IMAGE:
Susie Sierra
Sentient
oil on linen
102 x 168cm

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Australia

Other Important Exhibitions in Australia