'Days Dissolve' is a body of work that meanders through Lucy O'Doherty's established subject matter of time worn houses, fanciful interiors and sublime landscapes. Influenced by a hyper awareness of the passage of time and it's seemingly increasing pace as we get older, ‘Days Dissolve' is an attempt to seize certain memories from the stream of our fading recollections and force them back into the present by solidifying them in oil paint and soft pastels, as if this could circumvent the relentless onslaught of time's progression.
'Days Dissolve' also makes reference to how the sensation of days bleeding into each other has become even more heightened through the global experience of the pandemic and a world in lock down, as normal routines are suspended and individual days become hard to distinguish from one to the next. Living through a lockdown has pushed O'Doherty further into the potent nostalgia of her memory and dreamscapes as a subject matter for her works, as the this is terrain that can still be freely and safely traveled through in a pandemic struck world.
The notion of 'dissolving' has relevance to O'Doherty's preferred technique in application of both oil paint and soft pastels which involves blending the mediums until hard lines begin to dissolve, creating almost vibrating impressions of places that hum through an immersive deployment of colour, pulling the viewer into the whimsical refuge of surreal tinged day dreams. These techniques lend themselves to O'Doherty's interest in capturing the landscape at its most ethereal while under the influence of atmospheric conditions like mist and fog, or during transitions of time such as twilight and dusk, when the day begins to dissolve into the night.
O'Doherty is a former recipient of The Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, as well as being a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize, and highly commended recipient for the Pro Hart Outback Prize. She exhibits regularly in Sydney, Brisbane and Wellington, NZ, and has collaborated with Australian fashion labels Holiday and Worn. She has been featured in numerous publications including Artist Profile, the Art Gallery of NSW magazine Look and Grass Fires Magazine.
‘Days Dissolve’ is Lucy O’Dohertys third solo exhibition with China Heights.