` New Hall Art Collection - Exhibitions

  • About exhibition

    Australian artist, Michelle Hungerford returns to the New Hall Art Collection to show her latest series of paintings. This exhibition encapsulates the artist’s interest in landscape, space and light.

    “Living and working in regional New South Wales has provided the opportunity to spend time silently communicating with her environment free from the distractions and noise that a city life demands. Her studio is ideally situated on their Tamworth property with views overlooking the hills and valleys of the surrounding region. Time there has afforded a deeper and more profound understanding of this place she calls home. Her works reflect a visual equivalence between the vast rolling hills and spaces of the surrounding region and the more intimate areas of her personal surroundings. In this series of works, Michelle doesn’t just see things in the perceptual sense, she illuminates the landscape, it’s an emotional response to her experience. The works are contemplative and require time to absorb the subtle nuances of shape and form that are derivative of the landscape. Her palette is a subtle range of earth colours which are enhanced by the use of a wax medium, this combined with an underlying red ground that breaks through at strategic intervals makes for a seductive painterly surface. The vastness of the Australian landscape cannot be ignored and in these works the sky and horizon become essential pictorial elements. Michelle is conscious of how important these two elements are not only in her works but also to life in regional Australia. One is enveloped by the landscape as the road winds it’s way from place to place, the horizon ever present as it divides land from sky.”S. McMahon