Opening Talk by Andrew McNicol.

 

"I was delighted when, nearly a year ago, Lynn and Suzi decided to hold a joint exhibition and when asked to speak at the opening the word complementary sprung to my mind. I was struggling to expand on this thought when Suzi showed me the image that she and Lynn had created to promote the exhibition. 

 

There, as a powerful visual statement most eloquently expressed, was that very complementarity.

 

When two things complement each other they have things in common and they have differences between them. They also have a resonance between them that is undeniable.

 

Having known both artists for a long time it is clear to me that both Suzi and Lynn are deeply, profoundly, connected to nature and have been since they were artists in development as small children. 

 

In this exhibition both artists are commenting on the fragility of life, of living things and yet, paradoxically, the work of both artists attests to the power or force that is nature, with its intense capacity for renewal. The seed, once planted, becomes the mighty eucalypt whose roots penetrate to the mysterious underworld. The bones that lie scattered attest to the eternal cycle that is life.

 

Lynn asks us to look closely at the forms and colours in nature and the relationships between them. In the tradition of Japanese Art, which she was schooled in at a formative time of her life, Lynn stylises these forms, helping us to see the essence of form and the relationships that she sees in nature. She claims the beauty in the fresh and vibrantly new and yet she also claims the beauty in the scorched leaves of high summer. 

 

Suzi is a collector, like the first piece of hers in this exhibition, and from the bones, feathers and fragments that life leaves in its wake, she assembles what I regard as spirit forms. Where Lynn asks us to look at much more deeply, Suzi asks us to look through and beyond to the forces that form life and then let it go. The combination of these insights is powerful indeed."