Opening address for New Paintings by Elizabeth Ford at Gunyulgup Galleries, WA
given by John Dunnill, Murdoch University

It’s a pleasure and a privilege to be asked to introduce this exhibition of new paintings by Elizabeth Ford. 

When I try to think what is happening in these paintings, I think of a line by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats.  He is writing about moments of creativity in history and in art, and he uses the refrain:

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
The mind moves upon silence.          [‘The Long-Legged Fly’]

In the same way, I see the artist’s mind, in these pictures, resting upon silence, in search of its inner quality, and turning that silence outwards in paintings we can enjoy.

This is most obviously seen in the group of pictures, generally small, made up of 30 cm square blocks combined in various ways, in threes or fives.  In these, each block offers a single image, which articulate together into a statement.  A prominent motif in these is a figure we may think of as a cup, or an open hand or flower, directed upwards.  These are lyrical, receptive pictures, contemplative in mood, almost acts of prayer, and some of the titles confirm this character: Morning Angelus, Assisi Pinks, Intercession, Gift.

But then there is a second group, including all of those done in the last six months, which are a complete contrast: larger, more active, more constructive, exploratory, almost restless in their searching.  I am thinking of works like Lavender Bay, Lilac Ash, Winter Harbour, Bluebird.  As abstract landscapes, they suggest many forms – deserts, seashores, skies, ocean depths – but the surfaces are characteristically broken, suggesting an archaeological probing beneath the surface of things into what lies below, and into depths below those.  One colour gives hints of older layers below; textured images and fragments break the surface and advance towards us.  We see the moon through layers of clouds; horizons receding beyond horizons; deeps beneath deeps.

These pictures are at once intense and playful, subtle and bold, dark and luminous, urgent and inviting prolonged reflection.  Each in their own way, they achieve what to me is a satisfying wholeness in terms of formal qualities like balance, rhythm and tone, but they also question the border between what is finished and what is unfinished, seeking a deeper, more satisfying harmony.  In their restlessness, they seem to press beneath appearances in search of that inner unity, purpose and ordering of things, which people find hard to name today but which ancient Jewish texts name Sophia, divine Wisdom, described as: ‘more mobile than any motion’, ‘pervading and penetrating all things’ and ‘making all things new’   [The Wisdom of Solomon 7: 24-27].

So all of these paintings – the more robust as well as the quieter group – share in different ways a contemplative quality, as

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
The mind moves upon silence.

In one painting we discover that the long-legged fly, for this artist, is a Dragonfly, poised upon the stream, appropriately rich in colour and in motion. 

The broken surfaces and the luminous colours of these pictures remind me too of another poem by Yeats, called ‘Lapis Lazuli’.  It describes a Chinese carving in a piece of that rare dark blue gemstone.  It tells how ‘Every discoloration of the stone / Every accidental crack or dent’ has been incorporated into the carver’s mountain scene, turned into ‘a water-course or avalanche’, so that the rock’s very roughness becomes, through skill, a thing of beauty.

All of these pictures have been produced in the last year, and the majority of them, especially the larger works, have been done in the last six months, in an extraordinary outburst of creative energy which sweeps through the paintings and affects us as we look at them.  And all this has been against a background of Elizabeth’s illness, which has made the physical effort involved in painting increasingly difficult for her to sustain for long periods.  We should know that the works come to us at a considerable personal cost, though I doubt whether you would guess that.  Their energy is overwhelming. 

In any case, we know that the value of art does not lie in its cost – in any sense – but in the gift it gives us of something achieved, something which surprises and engenders delight.  For the way these paintings can surprise and delight us, I commend them to you, and I invite you to thank Elizabeth, their creator.

5th July 2009