Title
Mountains of Stone
Location
In storage
Place of origin
New South Wales, Australia
Media
Painting
Medium
Oil
Credit
Winner Calleen Award 1997
Accession number
CAL1997.1
Excerpt from The Calleen Collection by Peter Haynes (2019)
Born in Sydney, Yvonne Langshaw studied at a number of institutions there including the National Art School East Sydney Technical College. She has been a Fellow, a Councillor and Vice President of the Royal Art Society and since 1968 has been the recipient of many awards and prizes. As well as being in the Cowra Regional Art Gallery her work is in the collections of the Manly Art Gallery and Museum, the Hornsby Shire Council, the Shoalhaven City Council and the Hills Grammar School. She has taught for many years most recently was a member of the staff of the Northbridge School of Visual Arts. She lives in Turramurra in Sydney.
While Mountains of Stone is ostensibly a landscape it is as much an abstract encapsulation of the artist’s experience and memories of places rather than an interpretation of any specific area. The geomorphic forms that populate her canvas dominate the picture plane. They loom over at the foreground and crowd into the pictorial space. Their surfaces are filled with gestural painterly activity that animates the forms and moves the viewer through the artist’s imaginative interpretations. Langshaw’s palette is earthy and raw recalling the ochres, browns and reds that (often) constitute the colours of our land. The spirit or natural energies within the forms that have promulgated and her imagination are as important to the artist as is her imaginative re-creation of them. This is a painting about mood and individual experience.
