Floating transcendence and anchored realism share equal magnitude in Monica Rohan’s painting. Her sensitivity to her surroundings is evident in the carefully composed works, which reveal a love of pattern, light and colour. The paint retains a lucid quality and the decorative potential of textiles and luxuriant foliage act as ready symbols for the daylit world. In Rohan’s latest series of paintings, chairs act as an extension to human figures, linking them tenuously to their environment. The landscape is one of swirling patterns of leaves, swaying branches and open expanses of sky that together create a sense of vertigo. The precarious way the figures navigate the landscape establishes a strange tension and suggests a feeling of being overwhelmed.
Monica Rohan, Tremble, 2019, oil on board, 60 x 45cm. Courtesy the artist and Jan Murphy Gallery, Queensland
Jan Murphy Gallery
22 October to 9 November 2019
Queensland
