Review | Lucinda Chambers

h2. Birds and Trees

For artist Lucinda Chambers, ‘living in urban Sydney, I yearn for the natural world - a haven from this frenetic life. Birds are signs of the miniature world of nature and the world of the spirit.’

Lucinda Chambers is drawn to microcosms of the natural world. A continual theme in her painting is depicting trees in parks and gardens. In Birds and Trees, imported Manchurian pear trees, Blossoms, Rhus trees and the native Banksias emerge as stage-sets for poetry.

Delicately painted male and female Wrens, Willy-wag tails and noisy minors sit perched on branches. In the background, each painting reflects the seasons and moments in time – the evolving hues of a grey winters day, a luminous afternoon, or a starry moonlit night sky.

A series of miniatures depict a human hand cradling a tiny bird under a magical night sky.

Across cultures the bird symbolizes the spirit or soul. At first viewing, the intricate details of some paintings are like fragments from ancient walls, others are reminiscent of Victorian still-life paintings and antique greeting cards. On the surface they are decorative - yet there is so much more going on.

Chambers’ paintings are a game of perception where the eye is drawn into the tree to find hidden silhouetted portraits of lovers, relatives, text and tiny miniature human figures. What is curious is it takes several viewings to see these portraits, text and figures hovering in the trees. Affected by the darker experiences of colonial history in Australia, Chambers also depicts miniature bird - watchers, colonial explorers and gigantic canaries based on museum
models.

A skilled painter, Chambers takes her work beyond technique into subtle concepts of illusion.

Influenced by antiques, antiquarian engravings, medieval miniatures, Victorian paintings and cabinets of curiosities, she can paint in the miniature and in larger landscapes, her technique is inspired by the antique print-line engraving on the copper plate and the hand-coloured tinting process. Chambers dioramas are full of anthropomorphic birds, trees and flowers and ultimately imagination.

It is rare for a young artist to reach traditional and contemporary audiences, Lucinda Chambers work resonates on many levels.

Annette L. Falconer, 2007