Scintilla
- Vicki Potter
- 29 Jul—24 Aug 2025
“When you start worrying about the position of a mark, you cease to paint.” — Tony Tuckson
Vicki Potter is a Sydney-based artist, currently undertaking her Master of Fine Art at the National Art School. The artist’s work begins in the landscape but resists straightforward representation. Impressions of movement, light and distance are filtered through an intuitive process. There are no fixed subjects here; the interest lies in how the image is constructed and what it might hold.
“Walking is central to my practice,” Potter says. “It is how I gather sensory impressions and bear witness to the ephemeral: the shifting path of a flock of birds, the imprint of a well-travelled footpath, or the brief impression of waves on sand.” These details are not rendered directly, but absorbed into the surface. “Sometimes it’s a more enduring trace,” she continues, “like a fossil embedded in rock. It’s these sorts of images that find their slippery way into my paintings.”
In Traces, vertical skeins of ochre stretch upwards, anchoring the canvas in a field of soft, atmospheric greys. Loose calligraphic strokes sweep across the picture plane, not to describe a form, but to animate the surface. Like Tuckson, Potter is interested in the physical immediacy of painting, how a mark made quickly, even roughly, can carry authority.
Remains plays in a higher key, purples, aquas, and lavenders form a textured field, animated by painterly incidents: daubs, drips, and punctuating dots of colour. By contrast, Swoop pulls dramatically back. A pale, chalky ground dominates, with faint marks and subtle variations in texture. There is a sense of openness, even fragility in the work.
