Cliff foliage


Barbara BRASH
Australian 1925–1998

Cliff foliage c. 1962
colour linocut; edition of 35
Geelong Gallery
Gift of Moira Eckel through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2017
© the estate of the artist

 

The 1960s marks a shift in Brash’s choice of subject matter, as she began to look beyond figurative studies and towards inventive explorations of the landscape. An increasing technical confidence is exemplified by the multiple blocks used in Cliff foliage, displaying Brash’s flair for constructing a cohesive design through the interplay of movement and texture.
 
A celestial body hovering in the upper left establishes a sense of spatial organisation within this tightly packed composition, directing focus across the windswept tree and down to an area of negative space in the bottom right. Skeletal boughs, dense shrubbery and a craggy, porous rockface are suggested by varying gestures and pressure used to make cuts into the printing matrices, with an earthen base enlivened with both organic and geometric volumes of colour.

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Read by a voluntary Geelong Gallery Guide