Waves are portals into deep time. Deep time weaves time and the landscape together. Susie Dureau’s Beginnings, from the series Fathoms, is about watching the waves crashing on the shore, witnessing the continuation of an event that began when Earth formed; waves have been crashing on this shore for billions of years. Such thinking allows to challenge our perception of time. Watching waves is 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.