Muse

'Muse' is an exhibition of ephemeral beeswax and oil paintings by Blue Mountains-based artist Rebecca Waterstone, at Chrissie Cotter Gallery from 11th-27th October 2024.

Artist statement

‘A painting is not a picture of an experience it is the experience.’ – Rothko

This body of work explores the process of art-making that intends to transmit and translate ephemeral, sensory experiences of the natural world to the viewer, who, by connecting with the work, may in turn, create a new, personal and unique sensory experience.

The title, ‘muse’ pertains to the creative process, ‘the muse’ as the source of artistic inspiration, as well as the verb, ‘to muse’, to think deeply about something, giving it careful consideration.

The works’ delicate surfaces are impressions of ephemeral, intangible spaces made manifest via manipulation of amorphous materials - oil, pigment, beeswax, on wooden substrates. 

Three key elements exist – the physical work, the viewer, and the unique experience generated between them, providing opportunities to muse on colour, space, surface texture and materiality as a way of accessing, remembering or experiencing inner worlds of thought and sensation. The colour fields draw the viewer in, enabling connection, anchoring and containing the encounter, generating a private, silent, sensory dialogue, with potential for a moment of transcendence.

Simple expressions of complex thoughts and experiences, the works are distilled to their essence and offered as veiled, sensory landscapes, minimal visual poems, experiential snapshots of places, feelings and collapsed time, occupying an indeterminate space between painting and sculpture. They are spaces of not-knowing and possibility beyond verbal language, that both obfuscate and reveal meaning as they traverse thresholds of opacity and translucency, capturing chance and enabling discovery. 

Take a moment to look, move in close and really see. Be engulfed by the ambiguous colour and shifting materiality. What are you drawn to? What do you feel? Let the eye lead, lose yourself, merge with the work, immerse, give ‘the unexpected’ time to reveal itself, the way parting mist reveals a cloaked landscape. The more you look, the more you’ll see.

Historically, beeswax was used to seal and preserve bodies, artworks, secret letters. Here, wax preserves feeling, place, a moment in time. 

The hum of dense pigment, the frozen liquidity of wax-enrobed oil paint, and the imperfect trace of the hand facilitate an encounter where the making and viewing become inextricably linked, collapsing time, creating a space for a unique and wordless conversation. Like music, at the point where the work stirs us, it becomes a shared experience, where, instead of just viewing it as an external entity, we respond and turn inward to our internal space. It’s less about what the viewer is looking at, but what the works enable them to see and feel within themselves.

www.rebeccawaterstone.com

Instagram: @rebeccawaterstone

Images: @silversalt_photography