be.longing series

This series of paintings focuses on the idea of how absence can be both transformed and transforming. The yearning for a lost loved one is especially mournful—and in my case, the sudden passing of my beloved father in 2019 rendered me bereft. The concept of self as belonging to family, to place, to culture, and internal bloodlines, and the longing felt for these ongoing connections are embodied in these works. The use of the natural earth pigment yellow ochre, with its rich and storied history across ancient times (and continents), imbues the sense of a simultaneous grounding and expansion through time, with the yellow of sunlight whether it be harsh or soft. The multiple emblematic blues of Greece, including of her seas, and the wild ocean of water that surrounds Australia all evoke the sublime with reference to the ecology of life; savage and beautiful. The hues in these works sit connected alongside each other for the most part, and where deliberately merged there is a neutrality, a reflection of a still of time. Here, absence continues via transformation through the intertwining of memory and existence, acting as a triple point of the memory of the person, the sense of ‘place’, and the self in the present.

Georgia Tsarouhas, 2019/2020