Larissa Warren - Pretty Obstacle — Sydney Road Gallery

Fiona Chandler's latest exhibition,

A Great Balancing Act,

centres on her experiences as an artist through the last few years of great change. Chandler sees responding to an ever-shifting situation and environments are a juggle that she captures in her paintings.

This playful approach to painting, balancing and juggling the watercolour, means Chandler is not counting on anything, it is a direct response. Constantly resolving work in the face of wonder & new discoveries. Balancing has been a thing for millennia — nature adapts with trees and rocks in unlikely places. There are elements in the landscape where you least expect to find them — there is wonderment in exploration.

For the artist, watercolour allow her to delve into this intrigue and awe of her environment. Even the change in weather effects the way the watercolour is used and behaves. Chandler pushes the boundaries of her medium to capture the complexity of the Australian landscape.

Accompanying her paintings, Chandler has invited Larissa Warren of Ratbag Studios to represent the physicality of the landscape in clay form. The medium continues the dialogue of unpredictability, yet amazement, in art and life. Echoing her local landscape & using raw volcanic clays from nearby properties on tambourine mountain.

A Great Balancing Act is the result of Chandler's five previous solos, a combination of the last few years of work. She reminds us to seek out simplicity — a rock, a wave, a landscape — because here, is complexity, depth, and joy. In the face of the eternal juggling act, both one of nature and art, there is playfulness and wonder.