New Zealand, Arts Review
New Zealand Arts Review May 18 2022
"Four Landscape Exhibitions" reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
"Her view of nature are reduced to flat planes with soft pastel colours, abstracting and simplifying so the paintings look like elaborate jigsaw puzzles."
www.nzartsreview.org/2022/05/18/fourlandscape-exhibtions/
'Treescape Abstraction' EyeContact
John Hurrell 'Treescape Abstractions' For EyeContact
Delighted with Hurrell review on my solo show 'Elusive Form' at Scott Lawrie Gallery Auckland.
"Brodie's fastidiousness is a real achievement: her placement of suggestive botanical morphological ingredients surprisingly satisfying."
"Tonal contrast is used to emphasise clarity, and overall create optical 'bounce'."
http://eyecontactmagazine.com/2022/05/treescape-abstractions
2022 Elusive Forms Solo Exhibition
Elusive Forms solo show at Scott Lawrie Gallery
Shed 10, 13 Coles Avenue
Mt Eden, Auckland 1024
Aotearoa New Zealand
As one of the more interesting contemporary abstract landscape painters in Australia, Clare Brodie’s work is worthy of a little more time to look at, and connect with. These are not so much landscapes of place (although they have been inspired by particular places) they are also landscapes of the mind. Paintings that are both deceptively simple, and conspicuously sophisticated – tapping into our unconscious and connecting us to moments of solitude and calm, peace and harmony.
When I first encountered Clare’s work in Sydney – in a show which quickly sold out – I couldn't ‘place’ them easily. Was this Op-art? Landscape? Or colour field abstraction? Either way, they were certainly a breath of fresh air, giving me an instant escape from the stress and tension of modern life and the ‘smack between the eyeballs’ attention-grab of many contemporary artworks these days. Her paintings were gentler, more introspective and timeless, yet they resonated with an extraordinary energy that made them stand out.
In this, her first New Zealand solo show, Clare offers us a gentle and subtle connection to nature; each hue exhaustively tested and mixed again and again until the abstracted forms meld together as a unified and satisfying whole.