Lucy Vader

Melding a deep and enduring affinity for rural life with an iconoclast’s approach to pastoral painting, Lucy Vader’s practice sees energetic swells of pinks, oranges and yellows burst across her richly layered canvas.

These bucolic scenes are far from placid country cliches, appearing as if the landscape might at any moment break open to roiling undercurrents of pure colour that flow freely from one picture to the next. Working outdoors to capture the natural rhythms of the area surrounding her home, the artist’s new paintings present rolling pastures dotted with farm animals as birds take flight against sublime cloud formations that tumble across bright, piercing blue skies.

Vader’s attention to skies filled with thick, saturated cumuli is an arresting feature of Exaltation, threading across the entire installation and conjuring a feeling of the sublime that connects with the series’ title. It also has added resonance coming from an artist who experienced not only the catastrophic 2022 Northern Rivers floods but also the extraordinary resilience and steely determination with which rural communities came together in response.