Ann Howie

Recent Works

26 May - 4 June

Moving through the coastal landscape, such as we see described in Ann Howie’s Recent Work, we shift our focus continually from track to dune - to sinewy weather formed clumps and stands of vegetation - then back again.

As in Ann’s paintings, the experience is layered, woven, repeated – yet somehow, never quite the same – as if navigating an imaginary Cape Conron cross-section or letting in an Aireys Inlet of the mind, these paintings are not only concerned with the geographic forms, but also with the experience of seeing, feeling and being in a place.

The landscapes, painted over the past two years, at a time when coastal dunes were beyond our five and ten kilometre limits - not to mention being outside the ominous “ring of steel” – and yet, despite all of this, the imagery has remained intact and available to Ann, due to a deep etched memory and an unbroken connection to “place”.

These paintings sit alongside a series of Still Life images concerned with the ubiquitous cardboard boxes associated with the on-line shopping and home deliveries of lockdown. An acknowledgement that in strange times, the creative spirit remains undiminished, as the artist finds subject matter in any situation.