See the Sun from the shade by Holly Anderson

In this self-portrait the artist sits in front of a white lattice fence, typical of those surrounding suburban Queensland homes and swimming pools.

The shadow of a tree falls across her face in this quiet moment of contemplation. She stares pensively into the distance, alone with her inner thoughts.

The fence produces a grid of dark blue squares whose geometric order flattens the body and the shadow of the tree into a singular plane.
Only the artist’s own hands, depicted in nongeometric sinuous lines, lift out of this gridded plane. They probe the space before her, barely visible in the obliterating whiteness of sunlight. Like the hands, the figure’s eyes gaze out of the picture, watching the harsh brightness of the sun from the safety of the shade.

Working meticulously from side to side of the canvas, Holly Anderson uses the white of the canvas to depict the white of the light, raising questions about what is really there, and what is left out.

“Dense patterns of grids and stripes create scintillating painterly surfaces, their strobing effects echoing the optical phenomena of sunlight in the viewer’s eye. How sunlight might accentuate the limits of visual perception or expose a stranger embodied relationship to the Australian landscape, are questions explored across her work.”

Dressed in a swimsuit, with white glaring sunlight on her hands and pool-like tiles dotted across the canvas, the work is quintessentially Australian.