Understory

Sydney artist Louise Frith returns to Murrurundi with a spectacular new series of nature studies that dazzlingly dial up the immersive qualities of her painted worlds.

Delving deep into the thickets of Australian native bush, Understory sees a profusion of wildflowers extend right to the edge of Frith’s canvas, allowing her paintings to feel less like conventional landscapes than a rich and tangled field of abstracted flora that envelopes and transports the viewer.

“Understory has a dual meaning to me,” says the artist, who spent many hours during the last 12 months at Sydney’s North Head observing the interplay of plant life, its seasonal shifts and the dappled light and shade filtering down to the underbrush. “There is the literal layer of vegetation under trees, but also the story of renewal, emergence and growth that is symbolic of life all around us.”

These bursts of plant life are rendered with the artist’s signature painterly style, which displays a skilful entanglement of intricate precision and expressive flourish. Understory is at once a culmination of the artist’s celebrated practice to date and an exciting progression as she moves into more impressionistic, expansive, optically charged terrain.

“When I am immersed in the landscape of North Head, all my senses are fully engaged,” says Frith. “There are the sounds of birds and insects, honey-scented flora, a layered visual carpet of vegetation that sometimes looks like jewels in the landscape. It is a place to be lost in.”