LOUISE HEARMAN
Grainy close-ups, midnight-hewn swathes of slick oil-paint heavy with portent – so goes the work of Louise Hearman, a Melbourne artist you might recognise from her inclusion in last year’s inaugural Balnaves collection of contemporary painting at the AGNSW, Wilderness. In that same year, the Australian Art Collector named her one of Australia’s top 50 collectable artists, placing her, no doubt, in the same field as her erstwhile partner and Roslyn Oxley9 regular, Bill Henson. In this collection, seemingly mundane scenes: of shoes, old men pushing trolleys, a toddler in a field, people shopping, are all rendered ominous once again through her gothic gaze. There is a chiaroscuro-like feeling to her mastery of light, an intensity of depth that calls to mind cinematic greats, if refocused with a 21st century CCTV lens. Once, when once asked how she translated a simple scene of a moon hanging in the sky – on that could become hokey in less able hands – she replied simply: “I just painted that by staring, staring, staring at the night sky.” The world flows into Hearman, and paint flows naturally out onto her favoured masonite boards.
Until Nov 27, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, 8 Soudan Ln, Paddington, 9331 1919, roslynoxley9.com.au
