Mary Mulholland - 'Symmetry'
North Gallery, 7th–25th April 2010
‘When not working at the Croft, a Rest Home in Timaru, I am painting up-stairs in quite a small but light-giving room, in the four-apartment house where I live. I paint on stretched canvas and use oil paints, the three primary colours plus white and black. The canvas is painted black. These paintings have been scaled up to my required size from 6” x 8” colour photos using a measured grid. When looking at such
a small surface area to transpose from, the details only become apparent over a period of days. During the first coat of the painting the mind is constantly converting sight into colour, details onto wide open spaces. The first coat dries and the second coat is started, exactly the same process but now the eye and the mind are one. A hand mirror is always there to allow me to regularly see the composition once removed. To shut my left eye and re-focus with my right eye also helps to get a little distance. There is point while doing the painting that is reached where it is impossible for me to see it anymore, which means I lose all opinion of it and I can only continue on to finish it. I can never see it in the same way again.
The current show is named symmetry, which looks at Beauty or harmony of form based on a proportionate arrangement of parts. To achieve a harmony in the composition of these paintings I have taken a lot of care in arranging the flowers to find balance within the space. The distribution of light and dark masses in the paintings, allowing the flowers to emerge from the background often evoke an emotive response.’