Susie Dureau’s The Dance that Made the World, from the series Fathoms, plays between light and dark, revealing and concealing landscape elements and making itself anew every day. The tide draws in and rolls out in a cyclical sequence that is connected to the moon and the revolution of the stars. The sequence of eternal emergence is beautifully set in words by the novelist Ursula K. Le Guin, who writes, “The dance of renewal, the dance that made the world, was always danced here at the edge of things, on the brink, on the foggy coast.”

Susie says of this work: “I love to walk in the early mornings on the beach near my home. Some mornings, as the light changes, the landscape is revelatory and it is true; my morning walk is part of a great collaborative dance.

“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.