Luminous celebrates the study of light by Northern Rivers - based artist Colleen DaRosa.
Colleen DaRosa is particularly concerned with the impact of what she identifies as slow light on an object… the way natural ambient light is constantly changing its effect on a work.
Da Rosa’s work in encaustic, Plexiglas and paper offer a palpable experience of light at play. Her paintings highlight the translucence and lustrous quality of encaustic medium. Plexiglas sculptures exhibit radiant surfaces, glowing spaces and sharp edges.
At night, these works operate as glowing objects of dynamic colour when lit by LED lights. Lustrous reflections and variation in transparency and opacity capture and confound light's pathways.
Ella Dreyfus of the National Art School has described DaRosa’s surfaces as ‘luminous and luscious… moments of saturated colour contrast with the absence of weight and the presence of light.’
A Nordic-influenced aesthetic is tangible in Luminous. DaRosa’s motifs and architectonic devices echo the way in which the glow of light and natural forms seep into the fabric of Nordic design and architecture.
DaRosa's light box series, Light Confections (2017), are installed above The Coffee Grinder (in Lateen Lane as part of the Elysium Project). The Light Pools series (which forms part of her new Luminous exhibition), relates to a similar thematic, but here she seeks to amplify the presence of ambient light. In her relief-paper sculptures the encaustic saturation allows light to penetrate into pools of colour.