SATURDAY FEELS LIKE VERMILLION THEN CHERRY RED Elyss McCleary exhibition 28 November – 15 December, 2019
opening on Wednesday 27 November 2019, 6 – 8pm
Saturday feels like Vermilion then Cherry Red is based on portraits of ideas of colour and placement felt through a space
of colour synaesthesia. Colours and numbers resonate strongly when come to mind, based on learnt, felt, media, situations and wanting to re think and understand spaces about how colour is used and reinterpreted by us. These works have been recently made in the studio intuitively over a years duration, painted whilst thinking of a place, person or feeling in front of me. The found objects complement each painting and hold a relationship to what I call unstill lives; watching each other, existing together and reflecting ideas. The works question colour hierarchy and the weight and meaning of each mark.
Each mark re-evaluates the potential value in colour and how colours are constantly reinvented and reconsidered in
peoples’ experiences.
While synesthetes sometimes report they seeing colours in projected in space, they do not confuse their synestic colours with real colours in the external world, rather, they report that they are simultaneously aware of the external colour and also the internal synthetic colour. Merging the two colours in a painting creates an actual real existing thought of projected colour that does exist and reworks those that stand there already. Thinking about people, colours often remind us of some one, or
a letter ‘s’ for me always feels like red, and I see and slick cherry colour red when I see ‘s’ particularly if it is a capital letter. This makes me question why?
When watching forms that sit within space, points of fascination begin to support each other. The shapes and combinations of associated histories continue to perform meetings with each other. The gesture of the application of paint acts as a tipping point and form of slippage to this. The history of colour and how it is used manifests associations depending on my own experiences - or what I can only contemplate and imagine in others. Is a felt thing, learnt thing, an ignorant thing, a changeable and curiosity of possibilities. Saturday feels like Vermillion then Cherry Red continues an consideration of emotional states, reactions and observations led by an open responsiveness to environment through the making of the work document real events played up and pumped up with simple and complex gestural use of materials and paint performing with colour and space.
STACKS Projects is a not-for-profit artist run gallery and project space
191 Victoria St, Potts Point, NSW, 2011
Thursday to Saturday 11 - 6, Sunday 11 - 4
Elyss McCleary, Wednesday feels like Hot Magenta, oil on linen, 85cm x 71cm, 2018. Photographer: Simon Strong