Drawing on Absence – Lucia Sidonio
Ōtautahi Christchurch-based artist Lucia Sidonio muses on notions of absence and emptiness in this graceful new series of oil paintings. These haunting depictions of the quiet traces of human life and loss are achieved with a subtle potency in palette and brushwork, drawing the viewer into her contemplative atmospheres.
Sidonio describes the ambiguity in her work as a void or entryway. That feeling of something or someone being missing, breath caught in the chest, a pit in the stomach, the body responding to the unknown. Introspective abstract spaces in which we enter a painting through depicted environments or in the gentle revealing and concealing of detail.
The performative nature of painting is embraced by the artist. Gestural brushstrokes mingle with strong textural marks and ethereal areas of soaked colour. Presence and absence co-exist in harmony through Sidonio’s delicate expressions in paint.
Read more about this body of work in our City Art Reader interview online here.
