Catherine Cassidy

LOVE BOMB

“ Yet there, in the vast dilation of time, you were remade drop by drop, like the
stalagtite, the stalagmite.” George Seferis. Collected Poems.

This collection of paintings has been a constant companion to me over the past months, reminding me, as each work emerged, that they were the boss and I’d better listen up. I don’t think any other body of work has been so clear in what it’s wanted of me.
In that regard they have led me along a certain path.

They formed up as a result of many working trips into remote areas of Australia and as time went on there seemed to be an insistent voice always pulling me back to what landscape work is all about. They are undeniably about the primal deliciousness of paint but also about how that and human mark can deliver feeling and connection.
I wanted them to be landscapes of necessity.
Some are fragile images, ephemeral like the environments that inspired them. Others are strong and powerful.

As, in the poem above, in the vast eons of light and time that is this country, every painting brings change to me, remakes me.
However, in the urgent, uncertain times we are in now, I hope they encourage you too, the viewer, just a bit, to look at this fragile, beautiful earth we live on, to feel its energies and connect with something of a deep, and perhaps neglected, value.

Catherine Cassidy
2021