There is a fine balance between the background and the subject. This has been one of the strong challenges within this body of work: giving foreground and background equal power and strength, keeping an effective balance. The work presents a play between the focus and the unfocused. The process of the work unfolded the challenge of “change” ; working with paintings which are changing continuously as they emerge.
This body of work began with the painting META I. It is a transitional work, a continuation from my Retreat series. A thought within a thought, and a thought felt that I did not express in the previous paintings.
I wanted to paint a waterfall. My intension was to paint the water as if it is rising rather than falling, and while I was working with water, my brush pulled downwards, in lines and colour, almost without my control. This was the beginning of an obsession maybe.
Allowing myself two or three marked vertical lines on each canvas. All other lines are painted by intuition, free-hand. The lines develop from different places on the canvas, at different stages while working. The figurative element of the painting I sketch roughly as the stripes develop. There is a continuing correspondence between lines and subject; it is a very intuitive progress.
My first painting after moving to Australia was that of an origami bird. The bird has stayed with me ever since and has been present in many of my paintings.
I arrived in Australia just after my studies at art school in Switzerland, where my project on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s colour theory developed. The German poet, who was also a politician, painter, scientist and playwright over two hundred years ago, devoted over forty years to studying colour and developing his own colour theory. His minimal colours have governed my palette.
Painting is a continuous process, sometimes you create a work, you see it and feel it, but there is something missing. Then it becomes a story within the story. This is what I want to tell. There is so much in between, things we don’t know, and things we don’t see. And there is always the question of balance. What is important, what is superfluous, when does it tip over? The key is to find balance, between what is, what was and what will be.
Christine White, 2014
