12 - 31 March 2009
about the exhibition
Judith White describes her paintings as referring to ‘a state of flux and natural energy; a sense of chaos and random order in landscape’. Judith creates works with surface qualities that are at once complex and engaging, her paintings invested with an atmospheric visual energy. They do not attempt to describe solid form but rather to invoke fragments of the physical and visual experience of the organic world and, through these, the continuum of natural forces that propel the environment but ordinarily escape notice. Each composition contains tensions between a sense of agitation and tranquillity, movement and rest. The viewer is immersed within watery domains and luminous reflections which reveal the interplay of both micro and macro natural worlds. The images often appear tangled in a moment of frenetic movement and suspended in a matrix of light, water and air. By drawing us into her landscapes Judith encourages us to contemplate the grand forces of nature that underscore all living things and the fragility of our own place in the natural order.
For more than thirty years Judith White has exhibited extensively both in Australia and overseas and her work has attracted much acclaim. She trained at the National Art School in Sydney, and attained her BA degree, majoring in Fine Arts through Sydney University. She has been awarded many prizes nationally and her work was shown in the prestigious Wynne Prize in 1999. Her work is represented in collections throughout Australia, Japan, Holland, Israel, Indonesia and New Zealand and she has completed numerous commissions including a major public work for the Sydney Olympics 2000.
