As the morning sun emerges over the hill it spills through the bare winter trees, casting blurred shadows on a white wall in the city of Nelson. A lattice work of lines, thick and thin, crooked and straight, they gently move in an unfelt breeze, weaving between the recognizable and the abstract. So it is with Jessica Crothall’s latest body of work, Kahikatea: Moss and Mist.
On display at the light infused rooms of Atelier Gallery in Nelson/Whakatu, the paintings are decoded by the exhibition title, and we are transported into the dense forests of South Westland. Considered brushstrokes draw out knobbly branches and solid trunks. Dripping paint conjures up verdant growth tumbling off the limbs, heavy air imbued with moisture.
Here the artist draws on those who came before, Hammond, McLeod, their influence echoing through the years to meet us in the present. By no means is Crothall’s work imitation though, rather she’s utilizing visual clues that are part of the cultural landscape. She applies particular techniques that prompt association while maintaining her own abstract language. Supported by individual titles the works lead us to experience the natural world. Yet a small shift in perception can transform them, as if they’re dancing on the cusp of reality.
To achieve a sense of restful contemplation, Crothall washes down her paint, pushing the acrylic into the realms of watercolour, using it as in Japanese or Indian ink. Her works further reference Japanese sumi-e paintings in their reflective sensibility, drawing inspiration from the natural world to encourage deeper thoughts of being.
Each canvas plays with a different colour palette, most monochromatic in implementation. Some investigate the expected green spectrum but the blue and the black studies stand out, in particular the two Kaitiaki’s. Kaitiaki Blue is saturated, literally. Here Crothall has poured unknown quantities of water on the canvas, causing the dripped paint to bleed out, crawl through the background to create organic strands of descending vegetation.
In the soft, saturated ground the kahikateas’ roots intertwine with their neighbours, that helps ground them as they reach skywards. Without this support they would soon topple. In the paintings this is made plain by the suggestion of multiple trees, none stand alone. It is curious that artworks that benefit from solitary contemplation would create an atmosphere of togetherness.
Kahikatea: Moss and Mist displays a new level of repose in Crothall's approach. Where much of her work through the last decade responding to the Christchurch earthquakes has been unsettled and jagged, this exhibition exhibits, perhaps, newfound acceptance and peace. Finding her roots, and in the process encouraging us to consider ours.
Linda Dimitrievski (September 2023, Nelson, NZ)
(arts writer and practising artist, Nelson, graduate of visual arts, NMIT Nelson) Edited by Peter Crothall April 2024
