Northern Rivers artist Bridie Amelia Schmidt brings Terra Nos Curat, a new body of work exploring the region’s varied natural environments, from waterways and coastal edges to rainforest, rolling hills and rocky escarpments, to the Lennox Arts Collective gallery this November.
Having moved to the Northern Rivers from Sydney more than 20 years ago, Schmidt says the landscape has become deeply embedded in the way she sees and paints.
Some works draw on direct experience and references, while others emerge through imagination and recollection. In some, the remembered line of a ridge, the curve of water, the shape of trees or the weight of rock are reduced into simplified forms, then built up through layers of paint, colour and mark-making.
Other works are more figurative, inspired by coastlines, mountains and the subtle shifts in light, weather and colour observed while walking.
The land cares for us
‘Living here for more than two decades has given me a strong sense of connection to the landscape and to the diversity of life it supports,’ Schmidt said.
‘Terra Nos Curat can be read as “the land cares for us”. For me, that speaks to the way a landscape can hold, sustain and restore us, and to the responsibility we have to care for it in return.
‘My paintings are not always about describing a particular place, and more about what remains after looking. Shapes often begin with a remembered line or contour, then shift and loosen as the painting develops.’
Colour plays a central role in the work, with deep greens, blues, ochres and earth tones sitting alongside more intense passages of pigment. For Schmidt, these colours convey both the abundance of the Northern Rivers environment and an emotional response to being within it.
Schmidt is currently in her first year at Byron School of Art, where she is continuing to develop her approach to abstraction, landscape, colour and mark-making. Alongside her art practice, she works in communications focused on the transition to electric transport.
Terra Nos Curat brings together works moving between observation, memory and abstraction, grounded in a long relationship with the Northern Rivers and in the idea that care between people and place runs both ways.
The gallery is open daily from 10am-3pm, located in the main busy hub of downtown Lennox Head.
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