Bibbenluke by Lucy Culliton
23 October, 2009 - 18 November, 2009

Ray Hughes Gallery is pleased to present a new exhibition by Lucy Culliton. These paintings are of her new garden down on the Monaro Plains. Lucy has spent the past two years tending to the garden, and the last year making paintings of it. These are intimate observations of her world as she explores the land, develops uses for all the sundry sheds and barns, finds ways of depicting the particular foliage of certain trees or exact curve of a distant hill. The paintings show the garden in all four seasons, at all times of the day, from all angles. The view from each window of Bibbenluke Lodge offers a new and interesting landscape.

The seasons here are distinct, and dress the garden in their wares, each change exciting a new group of paintings. Autumn turns the leaves red, and invites mist to cloak the tops of trees, while summer browns the lawn and gives harsh shadows. Spring arrives with a riot of colour. On one winter morning this year, Lucy awoke to find a deep carpet of snow had silently fallen overnight.

This is a landscape which Lucy wakes up to every morning, the frontier she has settled, a place she must work to maintain. From the paintings comes a sense of joy to be here, of being completely blessed to find it, and alive with the possibility of making it her own.