Rustling Canopy

Catalogue Essay by Kate McAuley 2025
Around 500 BCE, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus declared that no one ever steps into the same river twice, for both the river and the person are always changing. It’s this idea of constant change and renewal that lies at the heart of Leah Thiessen’s approach. Just as rivers shift with each passing moment, her works unfold through a process of layering, revisiting, and transformation. Each canvas reflects her ongoing dialogue with the bushland and watercourses that surround her home near the Terranora Broadwater in northern New South Wales. The landscape is never still, the artist herself continues to evolve and her work mirrors that flux.

For Thiessen’s latest exhibition, Rustling Canopy, the viewer is taken on a journey from the leaf-littered forest floor to the sun-searching boughs of the majestic eucalyptus trees as they dance above us in a world of their own, bending with the wind, dappling and fragmenting the light. Rather than offering static depictions of the environment, these canvases seek to embody the bush’s natural rhythms - the pulse of air, the shimmer of leaves, the atmosphere of a place alive with change. It is only through Thiessen’s artistry and vision, that nature’s movement can be so brilliantly translated through brushstroke and gesture. 

Thiessen describes her work as an immersion in the emotional resonance of her surroundings. Each painting begins with subtle impressions - delicate marks and quiet tones - that gradually build into more vigorous layers of color and form. The process is instinctive and physical, guided as much by feeling as by sight. She often pushes a piece well beyond the point where other artists might stop, stripping away and rebuilding until a new kind of harmony emerges. The artist’s process is cyclical and layered, and her methods resist control. Paintings are rarely abandoned, but seen as a challenge to be worked through. Nothing is ever settled, but always evolving, until deemed complete. The act of painting becomes a test of endurance, but also of a trust in the process.

For the pieces on display here, planes of acrylic, oil, and pastel are laid down in broad, physical gestures, broken by quick, electric marks of cobalt and indigo that dart across the surface in sudden gusts. Ochres, soft greys, and smoky greens anchor them to the earth, while flashes of rust and vermilion flare like bark catching light. The compositions flicker and shift, pulling the eye across tangled lines and layered textures. 

In Rustling Canopy, Thiessen presents works that are less representations of place than embodiments of its pulse. They remind us, like Heraclitus’s river, that nothing stands still: the bushland shifts, the wind moves, and the artist herself continues to evolve, in both her life and her work. Each canvas becomes a record of that process, a dance between nature, persistence, and transformation.

Kate McAuley 2025