By Renee Wood
A new exhibit at Yering Station is demanding viewers step aside from the constant hustle and bustle and stop zipping through life without slowing down and pausing to take in our surroundings.
Warburton artist Belinda Rogers is showcasing her works in the exhibit, Light.
Working with oils on canvas with cloth, Rogers begins to create her large scale pieces by layering colours upon each other – all while considering how layers and light will affect one another.
This can be seen in the exhibit, with the layers and hues being brought forward depending on the light in which you see the work.
Rogers said the trick is to keep the composition alive with every viewing.
“I really love them in that they change all the time, like a cloud might go over and a piece of the painting will come forward or retreat and they just have this real sort of breathing element in them which requires time to sit and look at them,” she said.
Rogers has been working on these collection over the past two years and said each one allows you to have your own interpretation of what you can see and what it means to you.
“[Time] is just so valuable today because we’re all so rushed and everything’s so avert and we’re so stimulated, it’s good to just retreat, and be still.”
The artist grew up in Kilmany near Sale and said this has been of great influence to her work, with the landscape of flat horizons and wide-open skylines something that’s comforting to reflect back on.
Now living in the Upper Yarra, this is quite the contrast of landscapes as tall trees and mountains draw your eyes upwards rather than across.
“I don’t paint vertically, I always paint horizontally – I think that’s just the space where I use to go when I was a kid and everything was so horizontal, either the landscape and the horizon was always present and I think it’s just instilled in me that’s where I would like to go for my sense of peace.”
Upon first viewing of Rogers work, you may believe they are black, although this is not the case and one piece which is crimson tells the story of where they have all come from.
“Although at first sight, you walk into the room and you think ‘oh, this is a black exhibition,’ but there is no black in this exhibition, and it’s all based on that beautiful cadmium red, and then you pull blues and golds through that colour to create these.”
All colours which can be seen when you sit patiently and allow the light to guide your eye through the different layers.
The exhibit is now open with the launch opening to be held on Saturday 1 October at 3.30pm.
Light runs until 1 November.
