ARTIST STATEMENT

Diana Ellinger is a contemporary artist based in Canberra whose painting practice builds upon established notions of abstraction. Using modernist ideas as springboards, Ellinger’s work is a persistent experiment that examines gestural painting in a contemporary light. In the spirit of Action Painting, a movement particular to post-war New York, Ellinger sees the canvas as ‘an arena in which to act’ (Rosenberg 1952). She seeks to occupy her work so that the process of its making is foregrounded.

Applying paint broadly in lines, Ellinger works with momentum across a series of paintings at a time. With a complex palette and an intimate presentation of paint as a material, focus is paid to minute details – minor gradations in colour, the effect of marks made from a height, subtleties in surface, or the hum of two equivalent hues co-existing. These quiet moments are pitched against bigger territories of conflict and movement, so that the picture plane is invaded by a diversity of marks. The canvases acquire a worked-over appearance, which is at times interrupted or blocked by screens of paint dragged across their surfaces, or by mini dams of poured paint left to dry in a mould. These blocking devices serve to obscure layers beneath, which in turn play with depth, compressing or altering the sense of space in the painting.

Influenced by artists such as Amy Sillman and Charline Von Heyl whose contemporary practices have reengaged gestural painting and have embodied, corporeal modes of working, Ellinger also pursues the lingering promise of abstraction. But she diverges from the psychoanalytical, hyper-individualistic nature of twentieth century action painting to instead offer a contemporary approach that promotes a collectiveness, a reminder of common humanity and connection in the face of an unstable world where the word ‘unprecedented’ is now cliche. In this way, Ellinger’s paintings are segments of time, thrashed out on canvas, that offer nourishment when our environment is dominated by screens and pervasive, addictive technology that often means we suffer a kind of sensory impoverishment. These are moments of pause to counter the endless stream. They use complicated, messy materials to balance the homogeneity. Improvisation when there is design. Questions when there is too much assumption. The handmade against the machine – Ellinger’s work asks how can Rosenberg’s enthusiasm for the event on the canvas be helpful for us now.