Broadwater

Leah Thiessen: Broadwater  Essay by Emma O’Neill 

It is through the rhapsodic brushwork and peculiar scrawls of her practice that Leah Thiessen makes sense of the inherent chaos and beauty of the natural world. The dappled light and complex composition of each piece in Broadwater reads like a visual score of her immediate surroundings. One can almost hear the rustle of trees, the splash of waves, the cicadas descending into a shimmering hum as the setting sun sends a golden light through her studio. It is that place in Terranora Broadwater in Northern NSW, from which the exhibition takes its name. It is that place where the artist’s practice begins and ends. 

Frenetic, lyrical and raw - each work in Broadwater is a dance of colour and line. What strikes the viewer is Thiessen’s ability to translate the lush, untidy and strange Australian wilderness with a colour and pace that is all her own. The ability has come from years being at it’s edge: in that time, “the landscape has become part of my psyche,” she tells me. While the titles of each work provide a visual cue of their origin, the lines diverge in unexpected turns to emulate the pulse of the landscape. Even the rhythm of the artist’s practice follows the ebb and flow of the tide or the cycles of the sun. 

Guided by instinct, the artist’s palette can change several times during the course of making a single painting. “There are times I have seen my work move from very dark brooding colours to a white wash of paint,” she explains. “I’m not attached to the image, I’m more interested in the process of abstraction. I lose myself in the work and try to find my way back.” Some canvases start off bare, while others are revisited. The bigger the canvas, the greater chance of surrendering to this creative process. Thiessen isn’t beholden to a single medium. Moving between oil paint, spray paint, enamel, pencils, oil sticks and ink across large canvases, the artist builds thick layers that juxtapose the fine base of raw linen or canvas. The resolute magnetism of each piece is testament to the artist’s acute awareness of this layering, as well as the accretion of time and discipline required to produce works that combine a melange of colour yet culminate in sustained surfaces and compositional balance. Words fall short to describe this approach, it is purely intuitive. 

And while the artist loves things as they are (for reprieve, she turns to botanical drawing), abstraction serves as an essential mode of discovery of both her immediate exterior and interior psychological terrain. She professes that painting is her most difficult reckoning, the place where she works hardest on equilibrium (both its creation and rupture). This deep work results in surfaces that vibrate in a way that is at once feverish and soothing. Over a single piece, Thiessen finds new contexts and her brushstrokes continue in ungoverned pathways. Ultimately, there is always a place where the eyes can rest amidst the dance.

ARTIST BIO: Thiessen has been a finalist in the Muswellbrook Art Prize (2021), the John Leslie Prize (2020), the Glover Prize (2020), the Clayton UTZ Art Award (2019),the Gosford Art Prize (2019),the Calleen Art Award (2019, 2016, 2015), the John Leslie Art Prize (2018, 2016) the Pro Hart Outback Art Prize, and the Paddington Art Award among others. She has exhibited nationwide since 2010. Her work is in the Arthur & Suzie Roe Collection.