Michaye Boulter – Crossing

The mystery of the Australian coastline is the subject of Michaye Boulter’s exhibition ‘Crossing’, at the Arthouse Gallery, Rushcutters Bay.

The Tasmanian artist has used her experiences as a daughter of a fisherman and the wife of a sea farer to illustrate the haunted shore which has provided sustenance and music to her existence.

This is Boulter’s debut with the Arthouse Gallery and her contributions will be luminous additions to the Sydney artistic community.

In these oils, the ragged, dark edges of the land rise magnificently from hazy clouds of whites and blues. The shrouded sky is punctuated by brutal cliffs and crags whose silhouettes intrude into the background like a misplayed chord.

For it is the endless, timeless, limitless horizon which is a feature of these images. In ‘Crossing’, a mauve ocean meets a ghostly canopy in a union of seamless harmony. But the rocks rudely interrupt the serenity.

These paintings are photographic in their realism, yet romantic in execution. Finely detailed and delicately painted, they are testaments to the life giving force which surrounds our island continent.

This is art of tenderness, vague reminiscence and obscured sight. Boulter’s works have been seen in Tasmania and Melbourne and her oeuvre shows insight and imagination. Intelligent and emotional, these sea scapes are dramatic and powerful, yet oddly calm. They speak to a divided yet united world, unsullied by human pain and misery; a natural peace which encircles the nation in its arms.

(LR)