Holly Anderson is a finalist in the Brisbane Portrait Prize with her painting See the sun from the shade.
'See the sun from the shade’ is a self portrait that extends the artist’s concerns with light, landscape and the grid in painting. The figure appears in the partial shade of a tree before a white lattice fence, typical of those surrounding suburban Queensland homes and swimming pools. This fence produces a grid of dark blue squares whose geometric order flattens the body and the shadow of the tree into a singular plane. Only the figure’s hands, depicted in nongeometric sinuous lines, lift out of this gridded plane. They probe the space before her, barely visible in the obliterating whiteness of sunlight. Like the hands, the figure’s eyes project a gaze out of the picture, watching the harsh brightness of the sun from the safety of the shade. The painting observes a moment of self reflection, a contemplation of the artist’s identity alienated inside a strange and unforgiving landscape.'
The finalist exhibition will run from 3 August to 10 November, at slq Gallery within the State Library of Queensland.
Artwork:
Holly Anderson
See the sun from the shade, 2023
oil on aluminium panel
60 x 80 cm
