L A N D  -   S E A  -  S K Y  

An Exhibition of Paintings by Sarah McBeath
      Morgan Street Gallery, Auckland, NZ
      12th November - 1 December 2004

                 Morgan Street Gallery  9 Morgan Street, Newmarket,                           Auckland, NZ.  Tel. +64 09-3580577  email MSG

Contemplating the clear moon
      reflecting a mind empty as the open sky
      drawn by its beauty
      I lose myself
      in the shadows it casts
                                                                                          Dogen 1200-1253   trans. S.Heine

   Puhoi River  2004   oil on linen 1950 x 300mm

   Contemplating the Clear Moon  2004   oil on linen 1000 x 600mm

Puhoi River II  2004   oil on linen 1000 x 600mm

  Wharauroa Valley | Keruru  2003   oil on linen 1372 x 610mm

  Waimauku | Cloud  2004   oil on linen 1372 x 610mm

Wharauroa | Pipiwharauroa   2004   oil on linen 1372 x 610mm

  Waimauku: Dark | Light  2004   oil on linen 1975 x 300mm

  Waimauku: On Top of Renall's Farm  2004   oil on linen 1950 x 300mm

Waimauku: On Top of Renall's Farm II  2004   oil on linen 1950 x 300mm

  The Killing Shed, Kaukapakapa    2004   oil on linen 1950 x 300mm

  Waiheke Island, towards the Noises  2004   oil on linen 1950 x 300mm

  Jackson's Bay III  2004   oil on linen 1950 x 300mm

Coromandel: Manaia Inlet II   2004   oil on linen 1950 x 300mm

  Buller's Shearwater, Poor Knights Islands  2004   oil on linen 800 x 475mm

     Gannet, Oaia Island, Muriwai    2004   oil on linen 800 x 475mm

I have always loved paint. I love the way it changes on different surfaces. How it runs into the grooves; its fragile translucence when it is rubbed away, showing the underlying layers. I like the textures revealed when I brush lightly over the surface on fine-toothed linen. The resonance of layered pigment; the slabbiness of impasto, delicacy of glazes.
      Landscape is more than just something to hang my paint on. I feel a deep empathy for the land. It is the sense of God, of energy, of living-ness bubbling up, pressing up through the hills that impels and provokes my response. I love the scribble of trees across the sky, the deep fathomless nature of dense bush and the variety of shapes within it. With paint, I like creating vast areas of translucent glowing, like the open sky; I like making areas of brilliant shining, like the sea; I like comparing those lights to the dark secretive places in the landscape. These are the ideas I am playing with in these recent paintings.
      Painting is a partnership. Each mark and each layer offers opportunities and possibilities that may lead the painting in another direction. In this way, the paint allows the work to grow into something far beyond my initial concept.
      Some of the places in this series are new to me – for example, I had never been to the tip of the Coromandel before. Often I find the best way to become more familiar with a new landscape after the initial observation is to walk or swim or boat through it. Ideally, I like to spend enough time at a place to see it in many different lights and weathers. This way, I start with an idea suggested by the land – then the paint unfolds and furthers the direction.
      I am filled with a sense of elation and well being as the work progresses. As I paint, I develop the feeling that I become the place that I am painting. In this rationale, perhaps all my paintings can be seen as self-portraits.
      Many of these are unusually wide canvases. I tend to look for high viewpoints, with a sense of space, sometimes looking down on a stretch of water. The wide shaped canvas works with this sort of panorama well. The width stretches the imagination, and infers the idea of the landscape extending beyond the edges of the canvas.
      The enigmatic darkness in these paintings is glazed in a mixture of burnt umber and Prussian blue. This mixture is dark and mysterious, but not so dense that it cannot be transparent. Burnt umber mixed with Prussian blue has the quality of sharpening or softening the colours underneath, and I find it brings both subtlety and strength to the painting.
      Light provides a contrast and alternative to the dark; opaque or translucent, it falls, drenches, reveals and conceals. I also think of light in the metaphorical and McCahon-ish sense: bringing light into a dark landscape – bringing enlightenment into an unknowing world. "Ki te wai ao, ki te ao marama." This has been a continuing theme for me since 1998.
      When people see my work, I'd like them to feel a more profound connection with the energies that underlie the landscape, and a greater sense of our place within it.

Sarah McBeath November 2004