After her last exhibition at ARTIS Gallery of Fiordland paintings
Gerda Leenards' felt she had still not finished with the subject.
Particularly after another visit to the remote areas of Fiordland by
boat with the Department of Conservation Ranger.
In these new works now on exhibition at ARTIS Gallery Leenards
continues the Fiordland series but with some new approaches. The works
vary in scale from 2 meters long down to 100 millimeters square and she
utilises her device of breaking the picture plane down into several
pieces, a byproduct of painting using photographs as a starting point
for the works. She has also painted a series of works of the same
headland but as one moves past it with the consequent changes of
atmosphere and location. Despite her use of photographs as a prompt for her work
Leenards takes pleasure from the intimacy of painting and the lack of
apparatus between the artist and the paint. She attempts with every
work to draw on the experiece of the moment she is trying to depict,
capturing the atmosphere of the landscape.
In this new body of work she has managed to capture the
elegance of Fiordland, with a landscape of such epic scale a most
difficult task to achieve. |
