Reference: see Annette Larkin Fine Art press release 23.7.21, Weekly Feature - Elisabeth Cummings: ‘Elisabeth Cummings, After the Wet, 2006, oil on canvas, 70 x 60 cm
“Cummings has tried to paint an emotional sensation rather than an observation. She wants to capture what it felt like to be in such a place in a way that can’t be conveyed by any likeness….We are not looking at a landscape per se, but a landscape transformed by a sensibility, a temperament – or any other word one might use to describe the mechanism by which an artist makes us see the world in a new way.” (John McDonald, ‘Elisabeth Cummings’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June 2017)
Elisabeth Cummings is often referred to as a ‘late bloomer’, although she has been painting and drawing since her teenage years. It was a move to Wedderburn on the outskirts of Sydney, with the local peer support of artists such as John Peart, Joan Brassil and Roy Jackson, that she found her individual voice expressed through a colourful gestural abstraction, with still-lives and landscape as her inspiration.
Much of Cummings work has always been deeply embedded in an understanding of the seasonal cycles of the Australian landscape. She does not choose to paint moments of high tension but, rather, paints the aftermath of natural events – the residual landscape left after rains, fire or drought. A hallmark of her late work in particular is a refusal to let the eye settle in one place for any length of time – and as in After the Wet - she resists precise interpretation of forms, instead creating an abstract melding of human and natural elements in a way that is part still life, part landscape.
In After the Wet, Cummings perfectly captures the feeling of the bush after rainfall, in the colours, in the application of the paint and in her technique of linear scrapping through the paint to mirror the flow of water.
Authencity
signed ‘Cummings’ (lower left) and further signed, dated and inscribed with title ‘Elisabeth Cummings/’After the Wet’/2006’ (on the reverse)
Provenance
Framed Gallery, Darwin
Acquired by the present owners in 2006
Exhibited
In Good Company – Elisabeth Cummings, Chris Gentle, Robert Juniper, David Rose and Margaret Woodward, Framed Gallery, Darwin, 16 June – 10 July 2006 (illustrated on exhibition invitation).
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