Alice Laura Palmer’s BODIES OF WORK originated as a form of visual conversation, an experiment in exploding the complex interplay between the individual and their cultural environment. In this series of paintings, I was initially preoccupied with merging still life and figurative genres into dreamscapes and emotional iconographic collages. As this concept matured it was infused with the basic principles of cognitive and perceptive neuroscience, and the series grew into an intricate visual vocabulary that reflects the internal landscape of my subjects while meditating on the creative practice of drawing itself.
In these paintings you can trace the lineage of the central philosophy of this thesis, as the entire painting process is exposed in the narrative structure of the painted surface. At the heart of this exploration lies the concept of internal portraiture. Through the fusion of still life and figurative elements I capture the essence of my subjects; iterations of moments that stagger through our limited experience of linear time and space.
Much of our lives are spent in our internal landscapes, and connections between these atavistic shared iconographies is a major preoccupation in my work. Ultimately, painting is an intrinsically human process, a function of processing the external, floating world through the filters of nature the eye, the mind, and the hand. No act of painting can be divorced entirely from the human, and this fact forms the basis of my work.
Exhibition details:
Frances Keevil at Studio W – till Sunday April 2, 2023
Wednesday – Sunday 10am – 5pm
6 Bourke Street Woolloomooloo
Bus & Train Routes to Gallery:
Bus 311 Alight Bourke Street nr Nicholson Street, 30 seconds walk
Bus 324 325 Alight on William Street, before Palmer Street, approx 7 minutes walk
Bus 441 Art Gallery of NSW 4 mins walk
Train Kings Cross Station, approx 7 mins walk
Walk from St James/Town Hall/Martin Place approx 15 mins walk