Opening of Dreamers - Louise Walsh and Jolene Douglas

Walsh’s new works follow life’s ebb and flow, ups and downs and her insecurities about her work. Each work stems from her first piece, The Beginning, its simple lines and colours, creating an overall pattern and base for other works.

“These last few ‘Covid years’ have been hard for us all. Like many others, I have lost significant people, including my beautiful, artistic full-of-life mother. Painting through this time has been cathartic and fulfilling, not always plain sailing. I responded to each in different ways, using layering to build the surfaces and effects which may have taken days or months. The works are unplanned, sometimes exciting, and other times a tricky puzzle. The journey was a thrill for me.”

In my Wilderness We live in Mansions is a series of pastels by Douglas created for the exhibition Dreamers – a collection of dreamscapes – mystical, magical, botanical.

In each work the artist opens a door to the memories that are housed within these mansions, where stories sometimes wild and rambling, occasionally sorrowful, are relayed through personified plant forms. Each plant offers up its own story alluding to its magical qualities that have the power to heal and to nurture. Interwoven within these wilderness stories are the mystical threads of mythology.

https://tairawhitimuseum.org.nz/exhibition/dreamers-louise-walsh-jolene-douglas/