Close Focus

Jennifer Keeler-Milne 

Close: near, intimate, direct and within sight, searching and immediate

Focus: the quality of visual definition, to direct one’s attention

Reflecting about the last few years of my practise, I realised that the perspective to which I’m constantly drawn is near and intimate. Each artwork explores one small aspect of the natural world. Within this smallness, I am trying to convey something of bigness too; the universal contained within the particular, along with the presence of beauty and mystery.

Close Focus is the title of one piece within this exhibition; 42 square oil paintings. They magnify from small to large and are spaced so you physically walk some distance alongside them. Perhaps like a stroll in a garden or an intriguing journey down a camera lens. The flowers and plants painted within the circles inside the squares are based on photographs I shot in my late parents’ garden and other places. It’s a homage both to my parents’ love and our collective love of these spaces. Other paintings celebrate the colour and bounty found in the golden tones of Wattle and Beech trees, or the regal purples within the majestic Jacaranda tree that abound in Grafton.

There are also drawings. The most recent being 50 Elkhorn drawings that were produced in Ubud, Bali. Deep in a tropical garden I discovered an Elkhorn fern plant, in various stages of growth with fragmenting leaves at its centre. Within this decay, I found great beauty. This was translated onto cotton paper with a metal dip pen and tones of black ink.

My materials are often simple. 100 Feathers and other charcoal drawings were created on textured watercolour paper with natural willow charcoal. I save the white or the coloured background of the paper to draw the space around the subject. The black is the charcoal, full of void, full of mystery.

Beauty attracts me. It was an unfashionable objective when I attended art school, yet today it gives me great joy and inspiration drives my search through the natural world. Beauty possesses this power and has the capability to transform and change us. Living in a time of great precariousness how can we act on the planet’s behalf and protect it if we don’t find it beautiful and compelling.

Come with me up Close and Focus. It’s an invitation.