Karen Sperotto
Bachelor of Fine Arts / Bachelor of Arts
From the Sea (detail), 2012
A vivid imaginary landscape emerges jarring and unnatural, overwhelming the viewer through hyper real colour. Experienced like an avalanche, nature becomes the other and is no longer that place of refuge. Images of the sea and mountains represent forces that are mutable, moving, shifting, evolving entities, powerful and unstable, either temporally or over geological time. I am interested in the fluid and wet nature of painting itself and in the material process that uses movement. I used my photos taken on a volcanic beach in Iceland where glittering light and the movement of water made traces into black sands. Forms of strange and mystifying beauty emerged creating starkness between glare and shadows asking the question what appears solid and yet is also constantly changing? I painted a continuous scroll that explores tension between notions of time as eternal and also experienced in the present moment.