Artist Talk- Reflections in Light

Featured Image: SHRINE 8 – THE MIGRANT

oil painting on linen, 30cm x 30cm

©️Lynn Lobo

My exhibition REFLECTIONS IN LIGHT opened on Saturday 31st of August and I was fortunate enough to give an artist talk about my recent travels in Spain and Portugal. I began this study tour examining the work of Joaquin Sorolla. However, my enquiry soon shifted to a focus on my ancestry and the knotty topic of decolonisation. I want to share my talk with you, so I’ve re-recorded it. It’s not perfect and it’s very human. I am grateful to everyone who attended my talk and shared their stories.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO MY TALK.

All the paintings for this exhibition are in the AVAILABLE WORKS potfolio for now, so you know what I’m referring to. Below is my artist statement. The talk greatly fleshes out what is written below.

I hope you enjoy it. Leave me a comment if you feel moved to do so. Please feel free to share my post with people who may be interested. It would help me reach a bigger audience. You can also sign up to receive my blogs or newsletters to stay in touch.

warmly Lynn

ARTIST STATEMENT – REFLECTIONS ON LIGHT

As a landscape painter, I’m aware of how light is different everywhere you go on this planet. The atmosphere of a particular place is a mixture of climate, geography, culture and light. In May this year I went to Madrid to study the paintings of Joaquin Sorolla, a 19th century Spanish landscape painter and master of light. I was intrigued by the luminosity in Sorolla’s paintings. Viewing his paintings up close I understood the way Sorolla used layers of broken colour to create shimmering passages of light, made use of subtle variations in grey and used a palette of complementary colour relationships. His rough, yet acurate, brushwork was a direct response to the sensation of changing light. Sorolla travelled constantly, painting outdoors as much as he could to build up his sensory repertoire of light.

Through this study tour I relished the experience of observing and painting light in different places, while studying great paintings. ‘A sense of place’ is something I’m always thinking about as a painter, and as a migrant to Australia. The question ‘where do I belong?’ follows me wherever I go. Painting landscapes has been a way for me to embody a place through long, considered looking. Painting connects me to place.

What began as a study tour, became a journey once I set foot on Portugese soil. The practice of observing a landscape to embody it shifted to the realisation that the landscape was reflecting my dreams. Inside and outside became entwined. While I had culturally identified as Goan from India, I hadn’t realised that I had marginalised my Portugese ancestry. Parts of India were colonised by the Portugese in the 15th Century.  In Portugal the land, my cultural history and ancient body memories began to unravel.   

I felt like Portugal was revealing something to me through my dreams and body sensations. Certain places or views stayed with me as I meditated on them. Through painting, they began to reveal their messages like visual poems, one stepping stone at a time. I began to understand a very old story about humanity through my body. Focusing the light of my awareness on my ancestry, I realised how much the coloniser and colonised are entwined. My ancestors are healing a relationship through me.

Some of my shrine paintings are included in this exhibition. I’ve been painting these for a couple of years now. They are a long meditation on identity and seem to provide a context for my recent journey to Portugal. I am left wondering ‘was my tour my choice and I stumbled across my ancestors, or were my ancestors calling me through unrealised dreams?’

By Lynn Lobo 2019