Belinda Griffiths - Listening for the Quiet

Towards the end last year Belinda started a work depicting a standing figure, eyes closed against and amongst sweeping gestural brushstrokes. She was struck by the two realities that exist side-by-side in her work - the dynamic movement produced by the mark making and the quiet stillness which is wrestled back into the work amidst the chaos.

To Griffiths’ this felt like a metaphor and during a particularly frenetic period of her life and she was interested to explore this duality. The which is two series of paintings - Against the Grain and Golden – both of which speak to the expressive power of the gestural mark.

Against the Grain’ is a series of minimal paintings using black ink on paper. The unpredictable nature of ink meant that the medium would run and pool and stain in unexpected ways. Once wiped back, the ink leaves traces of past brushstroke and hints at a textured surface. Rather than being put off by this loss of control, Belinda embraces it as part of the process allowing these unexpected surprises to inform the next step in the process.

With the Golden series, Griffiths’ aimed to carve out moments of stillness, that appear to reverberate softly - like a whisper. In these works, sweeping and intuitive brushstrokes, dissect the materiality of the medium and explore the negative space in which they are presented. Warm flashes of ochre, set against the pared back brush strokes hold space in the void – while her calligraphic gestures and poetic compositions, fuse the performative and conceptual activities of painting into a single process.

As Michael Dunn recently noted, Griffiths’ work “combines technical skill and flair with meditation on the purpose of life, it’s impermanence and haunting beauty".