Bridget Bidwill Night Bloom oil on canvas 760 × 1050mm.
“I only like purely abstract paintings when the artist has arrived at them by working for a long time from something actual…” Ben Nicholson
For Bridget Bidwill the ‘long time’ has been a dedicated art practice of more than 40 years, and the ‘something actual’ has been the landscape.
The hills, valleys, stones, rocks and shadows; the dark, the light, and the reflections, the trees, grasses and clouds all appear in her paintings in pieces, shards of glass, a challenge to reassemble.
Like an archeological dig, the essence of Bidwill’s paintings are revealed in fragments, gradually discernible shapes are exposed: a drawing etched on stone, a plate, a jug, a coin. Things are teased out, dusted off, brought into the light, then placed on a clean surface before being sorted, numbered and reassembled.
Given time and some quiet searching, it turns out the painting isn’t abstract after all, but rather a painting about time and of our ability to read a painting for its messages from a past that is now our present, and will soon be our future.
Bridget Bidwill Flux 1 oil on canvas 1010 × 1010mm.
Bridget Bidwill Flux 2 oil on canvas 1010 × 1010mm.
Bridget Bidwill Into the Light oil on canvas 1600 × 910mm.
Bridget Bidwill In Transit oil on canvas 760 × 1050mm.
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