14 June - 3 July 2012
about the exhibition
Judith White’s paintings explore a sense of chaos and regeneration within the natural environment. Water continues to be an important theme of Judith’s work as she explores the ever changing light and volatility of its passage through the Australian landscape. Each composition contains elements that interact, collide or spontaneously coalesce across the rich, textured surface of the canvas. Using layers of pigment and collage,the viewer is immersed within watery domains and luminous reflections which reveal the interplay of both micro and macro natural worlds. Shadowy human forms appear like ghosts tangled in a moment of frenetic movement and suspended or swimming in a matrix of light, water and air. These figures not only provide a human content to the landscape but are metaphors for the passing of time, revealing the fragility of our own place in the natural order. They do not attempt to describe 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 and which ordinarily escape human notice.
For more than thirty years Judith has exhibited extensively both in Australia and overseas. She trained at the National Art School in Sydney, and attained her BA degree, majoring in Fine Arts, through Sydney University. Judith has been awarded many prizes during her career including the Mosman Art Prize twice, the Magaret Fesq Memorial Art Prize twice, the Manly Art Prize, The Maitland Art Prize and, in 2004, the Fleurieu Peninsula McLaren Vale Prize. She has completed numerous commissions, including a major public work for the Sydney Olympics 2000.
