Busy / Quiet

Elizabeth Beaumont’s studio is an iron shed nestled amongst the undulating hillsides of the Southern Highlands—the place she calls home.

Its corrugated exterior suggests a storehouse for machinery – but inside is a world of creative experimentation: creased and worn books; illustrated guides to Australian native botanicals—one devoted entirely to Acacias of New South Wales, wrapped in a delicious yellow cover; a library of pigments; makeshift palettes; canvases leaning in varying states of completion, some hoisted high upon the wall. At the centre of it all stands the artist herself: brush in hand, Blundstones on.

Elizabeth Beaumont was one of the very first artists to exhibit at Michael Reid Southern Highlands, when our program was barely a few months old. Her debut collection, Everlasting, marked a significant turning point in her early career.

The immediate success of that exhibition gave Beaumont the confidence to pursue a full-time practice. Since then, she has presented two further solo exhibitions and featured in a number of significant group presentations. With each exhibition, her work has grown in assurance, establishing a distinctive voice within contemporary Australian abstraction.

Each of Beaumont’s paintings is anchored by mark-making at once broad and fluttering, and tonal decisions that celebrate the honey yellows and rich earth spectrum of her local landscape. The painterly arabesques and flecks of pigment suggest a place in flux, rippling with life.

One of the great strengths of abstract painting is its capacity to preserve the movements of its creation. Every gesture, revision and hesitation remains embedded within the finished surface. Rather than pursuing a figurative likeness, abstraction allows an artist to distil experience to its essentials: travelling lines scoring a canvas, layered colour, and the multitude of associations these simple elements can evoke.

In Beaumont’s case, the Australian bush remains her constant muse. Across these twelve paintings is the unmistakable sensation of being immersed within it: deep amongst the shrubs, breathing in the scent of eucalyptus, brushing past strawflowers, experiencing the landscape in all of its peacefulness and frenzied motion.

It is a landscape that rewards close looking. A place that can feel, all at once, both busy and quiet.