The work:Cheryl Erskine, Moonlit, 2022. Acrylic paint on canvas, 100 x 120cm. Courtesy: the artist.
Executed during lockdowns in Stewarts Bay, Tasmania, artist Cheryl Erskine’s work Moonlit is a striking mediation on one of the wilder corners of the Australian landscape. “They talk about the gloaming in Tasmania,” says Erskine. “I get the mist that drifts down and settles around dusk.” Here, we see the colours leeched out of this waterside vista, replaced by a mysterious, almost ethereal half-light of blues and greens. By reducing her colour palette, the artist’s ability to bring movement to the canvas is expertly highlighted, with shafts of light picking up the wind as it blows through the leaves. Erskine particularly enjoyed executing the ferns to the foreground, their fronds reduced to pulsating lines in the gloom. There is a sense of disquiet in the work, which the artist ascribes to the landscape’s historicity, the bones of many convicts laid to rest on an island in the bay nearby. However, this does not have the effect of instilling fear or dread in the viewer, but instead highlights the notion of nature’s cyclical quality. “I would like people to feel connected to nature, after all, we come from the same ancient cells,” says the artist. The viewer is left to ponder the secrets this vista holds, and stand in quiet appreciation among the trees.