The artist has a long association with the sea. She lives and works in Port Fitzroy on Great Barrier Island. From her sailing excursions over many years and her long observations of the ever changing colours of the sea, land and sky, Bouzaid explores the tonal relationships in shifting bands that evoke the staggering and layering of multiple horizons.

From the early light shimmering grey, through to the bottomless dark of the night sea, Bouzaid invites us to spend the time to be ‘becalmed’ perhaps. To spend the time, looking, observing, dreaming. Contemplating nothing, understanding everything. To be aware and not aware, as if one breath were enough, and held forever. 

What makes one canvas distinct from another is the mood evoked by the bands of colour. How the colours interact at their meeting points, how the under-painting can be looked at as reflections on water, or the falling sun blushing the undersides of long evening clouds. Observe too the drama of a blazing sun, the dazzle, the heat, like molten copper too hot to walk on, too heavy, too still to sail through.

We are also reminded of Bouzaid’s long association with sailing and boats and the scraping and sanding back of ships hulls, the accumulations of paint, the building up and the discarding of memories.

This is Mal Bouzaid’s eighth solo show with OREXART.