Based in the Hunter Valley, mixed-media artist Helena Newcombe is familiar with the enduring beauty of the Australian landscape. However, in her practice the artist chooses to transport her viewer to unfamiliar terrains, tracing the dips and curves of an imagined universe with paint and thread. In The Daylight Basin, we see a vast mountain range swathed in sunlight, with reflections dancing across the water’s edge. Though abstracted, the work conveys clear topographies and invites the viewer to explore, walking the sweeping ridges of a golden valley. “I seek to create imagined landscapes that feel like destinations”, says the artist, and indeed this vista looks particularly inviting, the warmth of her palette accentuated by the softness of the embroidery. Newcombe’s use of needlework, a notably time-consuming approach to artmaking, lends not only a tactile aspect to this imagined topography but also a temporal one. The time taken to stitch out the sun’s delicate yellow glow works to make the scene intimate, allowing the viewer to trace the artist’s hand through both sight and touch. The towering peaks and calm waters of The Daylight Basin are to be traversed slowly, an escape from the mundanities of this realm into one charted by eddies of yellow, green and blue.
Above: Helena Newcombe, The Daylight Basin, 2024. Acrylic and embroidery thread on linen, 30 x 30cm. $400.
Courtesy: the artist