Exhibition
Same Ocean
ROBYN HARMAN
The sea has always held a fascination for me. In these paintings, rocky outcrops and islands exist in a metaphorical sea and evoke a sense of remoteness and wilderness, of memories and myths. They have the presence of a spiritual site existing in the liminal space between land and sea, between sea and sky.
My imagery is sourced from water and coastal landforms that I’ve photographed at a number of locations around Tasmania and also from the shorelines of San Francisco. Although these coastlines are half a world apart they are interconnected by the same vast ocean. Warm and cool currents circulate across the oceans of the world; the climate shifts, sea levels rise and wave action does the work of erosion, changing the landscape over millennia or overnight. A rock under the Golden Gate Bridge is subject to the same forces of weather and waves as the sea stacks of the Tasman Peninsula.
Coastlines, formations both natural and man-made, the line, the edge, the horizon, the constant movement of wind and water, abstraction in a reflection; these are common base elements. The viewpoint shifts from gazing out to sea at a distant horizon to close and enveloping images of water, the flotsam and jetsam of experience.