Sirens' Song / Vanessa Stockard | Vanessa Stockard

  • Vanessa Stockard, Camellia Duet in Antique Vase
  • Vanessa Stockard, The Tempest Study
  • Vanessa Stockard, Gardenia and Cherries
  • Vanessa Stockard, Solitude in White, 2008
  • Vanessa Stockard, Camellia Buds
  • Vanessa Stockard, Rose Study #5
  • Vanessa Stockard, Wingham Skies #1
  • Vanessa Stockard, Mandarine with Segments
  • Vanessa Stockard, Yellow Lilies with Shiraz
  • Vanessa Stockard, Ginger Jar, Peaches and Grapes
  • Vanessa Stockard, Violets and Passionfruit
  • Vanessa Stockard, Full Moon and Mars
  • Vanessa Stockard, Port Macquarie to Wingham
  • Vanessa Stockard, Study for Wave Watching
  • Vanessa Stockard, Grange and Oysters
  • Vanessa Stockard, Soft Siren Song
  • Vanessa Stockard, Pears on Gold Plate
  • Vanessa Stockard, Sirens' Song
  • Vanessa Stockard, Pear Study
  • Vanessa Stockard, Crevasse
  • Vanessa Stockard, Figs
  • Vanessa Stockard, Sunset Seas
  • Vanessa Stockard, Downward
  • Vanessa Stockard, Wave Study #7
  • Vanessa Stockard, Steep
  • Vanessa Stockard, Rose Study #6
  • Vanessa Stockard, Turquoise Crystal
  • Vanessa Stockard, Wave Study #2
  • Vanessa Stockard, Rose Study #2
  • Vanessa Stockard, Wave Study #8
  • Vanessa Stockard, Chardonnay and Fruit, 2009
  • Vanessa Stockard, Pale Pink in Antique Bottle
  • Vanessa Stockard, Jonquils with Sparkling Pink
  • Vanessa Stockard, Wave Study #4
  • Vanessa Stockard, Outdoors Still Life with Mandarine
  • Vanessa Stockard, Mandarines with Satin Drapery
  • Vanessa Stockard, Wild Skies
  • Vanessa Stockard, The Tempest
  • Vanessa Stockard, Wingham Skies #2

Sirens' Song / Vanessa Stockard
04 - 23 June 2009

This exhibition includes two recurrent themes in my painting, fascination with the sea and the continuing importance of still life. I was drawing and painting furiously when I was 2 years old, and creating images has been a constant throughout my life. My subjects vary, and although they come from direct experience they often conceal much of their personal significance for many years.

The seascapes originated in New Caledonia in 2001 when, after too many cocktails, the sea drew me into it in all my clothes in the moonlight. As dangerous as it was, it mesmerized me and I haven’t stopped looking at the ocean and reliving the experience in my paintings since. Working on these paintings now, I still feel like a Siren going home to rest.

Four years ago, I relocated to a small town near San Francisco, all rose gardens and antiques, and I started to paint what was for me a new and fascinating environment, a long way from the Australian bush town that provided me with my early landscape paintings. Old, worn objects next to the ephemeral beauty of flowers and fruit, lit by candle light or daylight, were an unending source of material for creating emotion and meaning from my visual experience. I worked fast and focused, to attempt to capture that fleeting first recognition of the significant and beautiful before the mind can make it mundane. These still lifes keep me conscious of the importance of living in the moment, of appreciating now.