'Doo-bluh-vay a' Paintings by Caroline Collom

About

It was like she had always imagined. Finally she was here in a land full of creatures, dryness and nothing but raw beauty. There was nothing else to see but the vast harsh landscape that surrounded her. The beauty played tricks on her and then bored her. The repetitive nature hypnotised her. The hues and straight lines lay burnt in her memory. Eucalyptus bushes grew abundantly with their subtle grey green ash leaves and the humming lilac aura. The palette was euphoric and made her instantly smile. The bright ghost shines deep across your eyes echoing the same reflections everywhere. The rays of sienna rise and fall everyday warming the earth and her heart. There is so much loneness on a land like this; yet there is comfort and solidarity amongst these rich warm tones. These paintings reflect that landscape; cool, rich, vague, isolated and a sense of warmth once you get to know them. You can go into them and be lost or you can go into them and be confident. Navigating between the different planes and taking risks to see the true beauty that is all around us.

Caroline Collom is from Kent originally but moved to Australia in 2011 to do a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne and graduated in 2014. This series of paintings are inspired by a recent trip Collom took to Western Australia. After being in Australia for 6 years she felt she had finally seen the country she had dreamt of as a child. The landscape of WA is like nothing she had ever seen before and she was truly captivated by the colours. The paintings are not literal landscapes but vignettes of her imagination and emotion whilst driving through this barren land. Collom is always trying to pull the viewer into her abstract landscape through colour, line and shape. Her painting technique heroes oil paint and the subtleties one can create with it. There are many hidden moments in a Collom painting and sometimes it takes a while to unwrap itself. The paintings carry great presence in the room and salute many abstract paintings before her. There is sophisticated complexity in her paintings yet they are deceptively simple upon glancing.