September 12, 2022
Lisa Rochfort Interview with Richard Morecroft
Interview & footage by Richard Morecroft
Featuring Lisa Rochfort
Lisa Rochfort’s paintings, woodcuts and ceramic vessels all bear witness to the physical elements, history and mythology of the rural property where she lives and works. As a focused observer of the natural world around her, Lisa’s paintings reflect in graphic ways the patterns and structures she sees, as well as the animal inhabitants – horses, sheep and kangaroos – which share her environment.
As she explains to Richard Morecroft, her wood-block and linocut prints contain details as specific as native and exotic seed heads; and in her ceramic works, there is a confluence of painting and the carved mark on the surface of vessels.
‘Savage Grace’ Exhibition | 17 August – 1 October 2022
Rochfort Gallery, 317 Pacific Highway, North Sydney
oil on linen, 59 x 171cm
“The Post Impressionists opened the gate for Symbolist painters to create landscapes where the living and the unknown, the familiar and the mythic co-exist. Gauguin blazed this trail, collapsing narrative time into the shared space of a blue nocturne. In this work my personal totems: the horse and the kangaroo join pilgrim figures. The space in the work is both historic and projected. In this realm humans may no longer be the guardians of animals. The core of the picture is focused on monumental horses, their strength is both primal and eternal“.
640 gsm, saunders waterford paper, block print with chine colle
deckled edge, float mount archival box, 96 x 192cm
Painting pushes into the void of the canvas, but woodblock printing is the reverse, the artist’s searching mark cleaves into the light. Inspired by the triptych form of traditional Japanese screens I follow the lines of nature: the arc of the wind, the tug of branches and the flow of the river. The energy of line echoes the vibrant sentient intelligence of ecology. “Everything you need to know is ahead of you, everything that is known of you is below. Are you listening when the river flows?”
For artwork enquiries and acquisitions, please contact Rochfort Gallery on 0438 700 712 or visit Wednesday – Sunday, 317 Pacific Highway, North Sydney.