‘Anita Laurence: New Works’ - 2008 Exhibition Press release

 

In recent years Anita Laurence’s richly coloured paintings have become celebrated for the way they capture and reflect not only the landscapes of the King Valley region, but its cultural heritage and the changing lifestyles of its inhabitants.

 

Anita’s paintings express the landscape in the form of horizontal bands graduating up from the fish-filled King River, to farmlands and the forested hills and mountains beyond. Her paintings are unique for the way in which they recognise distinctive natural and human-made forms of the King Valley landscape and translate these into an iconographic alphabet. She explains, all are elements ‘glimpsed and remembered.’

 

Her latest exhibition is a large body of work painted over the last year. The works are on heavy paper that she engraves patterns into, inscribing it with various tools such as burnishers, screws and forks. The thick paper also readily takes up and retains the rich colours of the concentrated inks with which she paints over the top of these inscribed patterns. The paint is built up in several layers so that some of the under-paint shows through. The exhibition also includes many colourful small pictures depicting leaf and flame-like trees in pencil and frottage (rubbings). She says she feels lucky to be able to works meditatively in her studio, as it provides her with time to ‘be very inward.’

 

Aside from reflecting the changing seasons, in Anita’s works we see also the agricultural history of the King Valley, from turn of the century farmhouses flanked by water-tanks on stands, to old orchards, and later tobacco kilns. New elements include the occasional vineyard and hay-sheds stacked with round bails. 

 

Locals have embraced Anita’s paintings, finding in them the landscape motifs with which they are so familiar, whether it’s the old flourmill at Milawa, recognisable groups of trees, or the distinctive forms of Mount Cobbler, Mount Buffalo and the Black Range, dusted with snow. Her works also inspire people to look at what’s around them with fresh eyes. ‘The best thing is when people see what I see in the landscape. People who drive through the King Valley on their way to work everyday tend to stop looking. These pictures make people take in what’s around them.’

 

Meanwhile, people from outside the region purchase her works to have a permanent reminder of North East Victoria.

 

Clearly Anita has a heartfelt relationship with the landscapes of the King Valley, one that is borne out in her paintings. ‘I love North East Victoria. I have a connection with it; a deep, internal “knowing” of the place.’ It’s a landscape that she remains passionate about: ‘There’s so much in this landscape: the seasons, the days, the elements. But really, painting it is a way of me exploring and putting down colours and textures.’

 

Anita Laurence: New Works, opens Saturday October 25th at 2pm, and runs until Novermber 24^th 2008. The exhibition opening is sponsored by Wood Park Wines and The Milawa Cheese Factory, and will be officially opened by guest speaker Dianne Mangan, Director of the Wangaratta Exhibitions Gallery. As always, Muse Gallery of Milawa Director George Piercy cordially invites members of the public to come and enjoy the exhibition opening.