Susie Dureau’s As it Was in the Beginning, from the series Fathoms, reveals clouds as portals into deep time. They are at once a prime example of ephemerality and a link to the oldest cycle on the planet: the formation of vapours. Imagine what the sky would have looked like at the beginning of life on Earth; one only needs to look up. Watching clouds challenges my perception of time – it is an opportunity to witness eternity in the present moment.

Susie says of this work: “The coastal landscape (the environment my body is intricately connected to) offers a compelling sensory field for me to explore my being – this is why I am drawn to it. My painting practice engages a method of cultivated curiosity: slowing down and attuning my senses to the landscape, thereby accessing embodied knowledge that arises from thinking and feeling in unison. 

“Nature speaks to me in nonverbal languages of light, colour, texture, temperature and tone; these are also the languages of painting. Painting is a collaboration between the sensory body, the mind and emotion, the material pigments and ground. Through the artworks in this exhibition, I borrow these languages to fathom a bond between myself and the landscape: a bond that is both commonplace and mystifying.”

Signed on the back.