Cathedral

“This past year has seen me pivot in both my approach to making work and my personal trajectory. Increasingly working from memory and tapping into emotions embedded in my unconscious, my paintings have over time revealed identities before I came to know them. Whilst staying true to the legacy of landscape my painting has also dived deeper to embrace an unbiased sense of self embedded into the natural world.” In 2020 Michelle engaged with the landscape of Arthur Boyd’s home via a residency at Bundanon on the NSW South Coast. She engaged with the natural bush, river and rural landscape of the homestead site. These spaces are the foundation of this body of work. She connected with Boyd's approach to landscape as an internalised backdrop for his own interior sphere where he wrote the essence of himself into the natural world. Michelle grasps this thread of enquiry with this body of work based on the residency 'Cathedral'. The works embody the landscape as a platform for personal interior enquiry. The dark brooding natural rock amphitheatre (‘Cathedral’) of Bundanon becomes a safe space in which she could honour herself. These paintings document her personal process of queer self-discovery over the past year. The changing states of emotion: joy, grief, fear, depression and love are evident. The work is a testament to both listening to our inner emotional landscapes and what it is to embrace oneself with a deep authentic love. “There was a moment, sitting in the natural rock cathedral where Boyd and his family would come, when I felt like I was sitting before an alter. Looking up at the weight of the big granite rocks, crowned with trees and a light penetrating a soft glow of the afternoon, as if from within. Their age apparent by their solidity, and the ecosystem of mosses and lichens, ferns and creepers that embraced it. This space holds something powerful of the past and the present.” ​ A narrative can be traced from the protected space of the work ‘Cathedral’. The heavily charged energy of 'The Fall' documents months of shedding the old self in a sense of free fall and eventual death of old identities as she becomes more conscious of herself. 'Here I am' is an explosive shattering of the landscape and her inner and outer worlds as she comes into consciousness who she is. The works trace a process of falling into a deep self-love, following a long-awaited diagnosis and treatment of her chronic illness. With her newfound energy she is propelled into undoing decades of repression and embracing the beauty of queer identity and disability pride. The final works in the series, 'Soft moves 1 to 8' offer a quiet sensuality as gentle waterfalls glide over a warm soft formed landscape. The brush traces curves that switch back on themselves again and again. They act as an embrace to authenticity and honouring ourselves with love. These works offer a calmness that comes with knowing oneself.