ABC TV documentary on Rowen Matthews
The Mix, 2020
Land is Emotional - Online Exhibition
Tamworth Regional Gallery
31 March - 31 December 2020
Artist Statement for Land is Emotional exhibition held at Tamworth Regional Gallery in 2020:
I overheard the phrase ‘land is an emotional subject for farmers’, and I thought: ‘Yes, land is emotional.’ For me, land is not passive. It responds to me as I paint; it lets me in, allows me to know more, as I immerse myself. It openly displays its history and health. Land speaks with wind and heat and light and colour and texture and so many other voices; as a result, I experience painting as having a conversation with land, a dialogue, so I can both feel the land and feel the painted mark concurrently. Feelings emerge out of sensory immersion in land, and those feelings can be processed as paintings.
I have lived with a new experience of land on the Liverpool Plains over the past three years, feeling a deep effect of place. The harshness of extreme drought and the expansive, severe majesty of the land of the Liverpool Plains have altered the way I respond, the way I exist. Tolstoy wrote that the emotive content of an artwork is able, when the work is successful, to ‘infect’ an audience with an emotive response. Producing artwork that is in dialogue with land empowers the work with an intensity that can promote an emotive response for all viewers, not just for those members of an audience who have a background in visual art.
The exhibition is composed of a suite of nine large paintings, large enough for the audience to immerse themselves. When you stand one metre back from the surface, each painting can take over your field of vision. The exhibition is an immersive, site-specific experience, a sensory installation, using the sensory nature of oil paint together with the voluminous gallery space as a simulation of the expansive texture and space of the Liverpool Plains. The paint is oil-rich, applied with spatulas to create large, raw, urgent marks that describe crops, failed crops, black soil, grasslands, scuttling clouds. These marks also embody my physical participation. In this process, these paintings are a record of the conversation between this place and my survival here.
I overheard the phrase ‘land is an emotional subject for farmers’, and I thought: ‘Yes, land is emotional.’ For me, land is not passive. It responds to me as I paint; it lets me in, allows me to know more, as I immerse myself. It openly displays its history and health. Land speaks with wind and heat and light and colour and texture and so many other voices; as a result, I experience painting as having a conversation with land, a dialogue, so I can both feel the land and feel the painted mark concurrently. Feelings emerge out of sensory immersion in land, and those feelings can be processed as paintings.
I have lived with a new experience of land on the Liverpool Plains over the past three years, feeling a deep effect of place. The harshness of extreme drought and the expansive, severe majesty of the land of the Liverpool Plains have altered the way I respond, the way I exist. Tolstoy wrote that the emotive content of an artwork is able, when the work is successful, to ‘infect’ an audience with an emotive response. Producing artwork that is in dialogue with land empowers the work with an intensity that can promote an emotive response for all viewers, not just for those members of an audience who have a background in visual art.
The exhibition is composed of a suite of nine large paintings, large enough for the audience to immerse themselves. When you stand one metre back from the surface, each painting can take over your field of vision. The exhibition is an immersive, site-specific experience, a sensory installation, using the sensory nature of oil paint together with the voluminous gallery space as a simulation of the expansive texture and space of the Liverpool Plains. The paint is oil-rich, applied with spatulas to create large, raw, urgent marks that describe crops, failed crops, black soil, grasslands, scuttling clouds. These marks also embody my physical participation. In this process, these paintings are a record of the conversation between this place and my survival here.
- Dr Rowen Matthews, March 2020
Cloud is Emotional
Purchased by the Friends of Tamworth Regional Gallery for the permanent collection, 2020
Illuminated Promotional Panel for
Land is Emotional
Tamworth Regional Gallery, 2020
Art Almanac
Behind Closed Doors by Laraine Deer
May 2020
Country Style
Annual Artist Edition April 2020
Little Kickerbell: A historic property and homestead on the Liverpool Plains
Moving from the NSW Blue Mountains to a historic property on the Liverpool Plains has given artist Rowen Matthews a new appreciation of the landscape.
Click here for Article
Click here for Article
Mudgee Dam
Donated to WIRES for auction after the devastating bushfires, 2020
The Wall
diptych, oil on canvas, 122 x 304 cm, 2019
Day Gallery in Blackheath
Rowen Matthews standing in front of Icon with Mist after its acquisition by the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, 2019.
Fast Clouds
Toured throughout Eastern States in the JADA prize exhibit, 2017
Nocturne Exhibition at the Day Gallery in Blackheath, 2017
