Marker's Commentary

These quietly beautiful canvasses offer a deeply felt personal perspective of the student's grandparents' home and of the fading memory of these family members and their traditional Japanese culture. The contrast between new and old, of current existence and memory is established through style, subject and colour symbolism. There is great intimacy in the selection of subject matter. The large painting features a newly built multi-storey house butting up against the fading memory of the old ethereal, melancholy house. Painted in delicate ochres and warm sepia tones the 'memory house' is redolent with meaning and reference to past times. A tiny figure and dog at its base allude to the simplicity of the 'old' way of life. The student has elected to use a limited palette and the washes of brown oil pigment sit in carefully calculated juxtaposition to the austere, opaque cement white-grey walls and the somewhat stark and uniform ultramarine blue tiled roof of the new house.

A smaller painting features an open bowl with an incense stick emitting delicate wisps of blue smoke snaking up the canvas. Other paintings depict an empty dog kennel sitting alone in the earth landscape; lidded pots and elegant porcelain crockery neatly stacked in a wooden cupboard; a cane basket of dried roses and small Japanese mementos. Each work is imbued with nostalgia. A strong set of aesthetic principles have guided the production of this painting series and the connections to Dutch Realist painters of the 17th century is evident. There is both restraint and sensitivity in building these rich tones with oil paint that provides levels of translucency and opacity. All have been painted with such finesse and understanding of light and shadow that they are entirely convincing as three-dimensional objects and carriers of memory. The paintings convey a sense of timelessness and act as a historical record of urban expansion and the loss of cultural and aesthetic traditions. They are meditative, personal, beautiful and mysterious. The body of work becomes a subjective and collective comment on the transience of memory, loss and yearning.