“My practice experiments with painting as an open and fluxing pictorial field. With an interest in landscape and mysticism, the plane becomes a collapsible space where elements arrive in various patterns and combinations to suggest abstract natural phenomena. Examples of this include: the ongoing creation of personal hieroglyphs (mountains, deserts, caves, forests, lakes, undertow); the composition of space as a ‘cosmos’, where seemingly disparate elements are encouraged to interact in a pictorial system akin to a landscape; and, an interrogation of an ‘all-over’ field as a method for allowing flux within the image. From these experiments, the work uses contemporary painting to imagine the natural world (post-Internet).

Materially, the practice is process-driven with an emphasis on studio experimentation. Varied applications of paint and media are used; colour, drawing and mark making are fundamental to both the overall aesthetic and conceptualisation of the paintings. This focus on gesture and the handmade allows for time spent meditating on ‘nature’ as a space that is energetic, vulnerable and mythologised.”

Laura Skerlj
Artist Statement, 2015.