A New Take on Landscapes

New to Two Rivers Gallery is Dunedin artist Liz Rowe. Below she shares a bit about herself and what inspires her large-scale acrylic and charcoal paintings.

“Much of my work uses landscape to explore ideas around place and the environment. Landscape has a long and rich history within Western art and the conventions of landscape are well understood. Rather than the traditional landscape view my images are of ordinary places. Sometimes I draw in charcoal and pale washes to emphasise the unremarkable nature of places that are often overlooked. 

More recently I have begun painting in brightly colours-landscapes with a decidedly kitsch and digitalized feel to them. While these works have their feet planted in standard notions of the picturesque, these are also places that are so familiar they could be every place, yet be no place in particular at the same time. I want to draw attention on what we do with all out land, not just the small pockets of spectacular scenery amongst the paddocks and the tracts of houses. 

My environmental concerns are especially focused on the dairy industry and I have done a number of works based around this theme. While dairying has been good for NZ, I’m not sure we want to turn the whole country into a dairy farm. If we continue with unsustainable family practices, endless subdivisions for housing sprawl and exploitation of resources at any cost we will lose everything that we value about NZ and our place in the world.”

Making Milking Faster & Easier. Acrylic & Charcoal on paper. $650