Luminous state.
Handmark Gallery, Hobart
11 - 28 October
2024
Exhibition essay.
Clifford How, 2024
To light up or illuminate; well-lit
This dictionary definition is a repeating theme behind this collection of latest works.
The title of Luminous State is a duality and can refer to both a literal geographical location, such as in this case, the state of Tasmania, and a condition of the mind.
Over the years I’ve researched and examined many of Tasmania’s remote and rugged landscapes. This group of works which has formed the Luminous State exhibition, is a collaboration of these sojourns and a memory filled revisiting of this visual and emotive discovery.
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Despite the variety in locations represented, the one repeating factor in this exhibition is the quality and transient nature of Tasmania’s light and my ability in harnessing this light quality in paint.
Tasmania’s light is recognised across the nation as having a clarity and warmth that bathes it subjects. Particularly at certain times of the year as the sun tracks a low trajectory across the sky.
The illumination of this direct light through clear alpine air or filtered light through a heavy atmosphere, provides an unending and ambient form of communication to the viewer.
Recording these moments literally in the field by means of plein air studies, sketches and photographs has provided me with the means back in the studio of giving to the viewer of my work the same emotive response I experienced when on location.
If the viewer can feel the bite of a southerly breeze or the desperate warmth of alpine sun late in the day emanating from these paintings, then my work has found its purpose.