Melissa Boughey's first solo exhibition with FLG presents a collection of new large scale paintings and works on paper that intuitively respond to the beauty of the South Coast region of Western Australia to which she calls home, as well as to that of the Ikara-Flinders Ranges mountain chain in South Australia's Outback. Through a process of plein air drawing, gestural mark-making and a sensitivity toward materials and surfaces, Boughey's images are allowed to develop freely until a resolved, phenomenological and glistening memory of a landscape emerges.
Catalogue essay by Phe Luxford 2021‘Despair is always rational, but hope is human … in spite of everything, I find the world very beautiful.’ Richard Flanagan
Western Australian artist Melissa Boughey paints the landscape of her region with a sense of mindful presence. She states of her practice, “In richly textural oil paintings and expressive plein air drawings, I intend to explore my backyard and beyond with joy and wonder.” The title of the exhibition – Small Wonder – is a term often linked to a negative occurrence, of being unsurprised by a situation or a disappointment. But for Boughey the phrase is intended quite literally, as an act of quiet appreciation, of close and unassuming observation of the natural world and the potential such encounters offer the human experience. Her quick plein air style loosely records the physical qualities of nature’s forms and textures, infused with an emotional frisson. A deeply felt impression of the landscape emerges. Reflecting a holistic, phenomenological experience, her images outwardly communicate the poetic essence of a place.
The artist’s translations of her surroundings, her sense of perception, thought and emotional responses, all coalesce in her large, fluid images; first sketched in shorthand on paper and then built up into larger impasto canvases. Loose gestural explosions of colour and line tell us abstractly of the environment that surrounds her. Great daubs of purple brown speak of undulating earth; pools of orange indicate the rising up of a hill or valley; rapid gestures capture the quality of scrubby bush and vertical repetitions suggest an outcrop of trees. Within these expressive images the physical process of observation, appreciation and individual interpretation coalesce in a newly reflected world where mind and matter are fused into one. Boughey recently undertook a road trip across the Nullarbor, travelling into the Ikara-Flinders Ranges in central South Australia. The works in this exhibition intuitively reference both this rugged expanse of land and also that of the South Coast of Western Australia to which Melissa calls home. Both landscapes are possibly quite unfamiliar and certainly unattainable to many Australians at the moment. Encountering Boughey’s work, I confess to feeling a strong sense of green-eyed longing. Abiding by yet another lockdown on the other side of the country, the idea of being able to enter such untamed natural environments, those kinds of spaces where the landscape is the uncontrolled and rambling dominion of flora and fauna, seems a dreamlike proposition. I try to imagine what it would sound like there, how it would smell, and to visualise my body in that world, feeling the crunching texture of dirt and rock under foot and what it would be like to take in a sweeping horizon free of anything man-made. Boughey’s images generate a sense of vastness typical of the Australian inland but also suggests an experience of deep immersion, of being enveloped within the woody scrub-land of the central deserts. Inspired by the untamed and unpredictable quality of her environment, the artworks in this exhibition are each a distillation of pure engagement with nature. Imbued with a palpable sense of possibility, they capture both the truth of a location and the artist’s own emotional journey through it. For those observing these landscapes through the conduit of her visual language, Boughey’s images offer a spirited celebration of place, and a quiet feeling of wonder unfolds.
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Melissa Boughey’s painting practice speaks of a life lived on the land and an intimate connection with both the wild and tamed landscapes formed through her close daily interactions working on her farm and her commitment to revegetating native habitat. Ocean swims, walking the dog, and drawing plein-air in the rich paperbark wetlands a stones throw from her studio make up some of her deeply resonant experiences of landscape. Melissa’s loose plein air drawings allow the viewer a glimpse into the artist's working process and provide a visual clue to some of the shapes and forms that emerge in her resulting paintings.
Boughey completed a Bachelor of Arts at Curtin University in 1994 before moving to Southern WA where she and her family run a small farm vineyard and cellar door. In the last decade Melissa has focused on her arts practice, holding many group and solo exhibitions, as well as being selected finalist in a number of national shows including the Muswellbrook Art Prize (2021, 2019), The Paul Guest Prize for Drawing (2016), Kogarah Art Prize (2015), Albany Art Prize (2015), Lloyd Rees Landscape Prize (2015) & Fleurieu Art Prize (2011) amongst others.
She currently works from her home studio, overlooking pristine rehabilitated wetlands, and takes inspiration from her immediate surroundings. She exhibits regularly in Melbourne, Sydney and regional Western Australia. Her work is held in the Busselton Health Service, Mental Health Unit, WA, The Office of the Public Sector, Government of Western Australia and private collections in Australia, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and France.
