Looking for Leaves, Finding Flowers

With great dexterity and patience, Susan Morris paints the beloved forms of Australian botanical still life. Banksias, flowering gums, eucalyptus and proteas are gathered into vessels, their branches twisting, reaching and, at times, almost spilling beyond the picture plane. Against simplified grounds—often a single field of colour—the arrangements are allowed to stand on their own terms. In doing so, Morris evokes Margaret Preston’s notion of still life as a laboratory in which the fundamental concerns of painting may be tested.

The artist’s subjects are bathed in a soft, diffuse light that settles evenly across every leaf and stem, describing their distinctive forms while never losing the texture and vitality of the painted surface. Drawn indoors, these clippings and branches enter the artist’s intimate world of vases and vessels—some spare and utilitarian, others embellished with painted motifs. Morris always paints from life. Reference photographs may be taken as a practical necessity – but her aim is to retain a painterly immediacy, keeping the scene alive to both eye and hand.

Morris moves effortlessly between dramatically darkened grounds and luminous, high-key compositions. The former recall the tradition of Dutch still-life painting, their finely handled forms emerging from cloistered, atmospheric spaces where sprays of yellow wattle seem almost to glow from within the darkness. The latter embrace clarity and openness, allowing branches, buds and blossoms to unfold with measured precision against fields of light.

Nested within the exhibition’s title is the idea of accidental discovery—a sudden and welcome surprise. While combing through a tangle of leaves, one chances upon a beautiful flower. Encountering this collection feels much the same.