Steeped in the avant-garde traditions of action, abstract-expressionist and performance painting. Melbourne artist Anna White explores viscosity in her own way. On small sheets of variously tinted perspex she daubs, smears and manipulates with virtuosic finesse the wet body of oil paint. Less concerned with its gross materiality than its theatrical ability to invoke intuitive gesture, rapid drama and infinitely subtle transitional states, she bids, using scrapers and other tools, paint to compose the painting. Sometimes the result is unexpectedly like flickering, swarming electro-static fields, at others like strangely volatile beds of flowers seeking to cohere against forces of intense speed.
Oil on Acrylic Perspex 31 x 44cm.