After the Flood – Drew Truslove

In After the Flood, Eora/Sydney-based artist, Drew Truslove turns his attention again to the Minnamurra River and its surrounding bushland, tracing the tangled beauty and abundance of this river country.

Working with a single colour—a luminous, mineral blue – Truslove’s landscape are drawn in near-continuous fields of marks, looping, searching and restless. His line doubles back, thickens and disperses, at times so fine it seems to hover just above the canvas, then gathering weight along the spine of a trunk, or in the articulation of roots gripping the bank. Ink proves uniquely suited to this task. It follows the slip of a hand without resistance, registering each pause and surge of confidence. 

The effect is of a landscape in the process of assembling itself: the river country as a shifting tangle of elements and relations, continually being rewritten.

In After the Flood, Truslove observes the Minnamurra River after a period of inundation. Flooded banks have been reshaped, trees displaced and channels re-routed. There is an underlying awareness of force, of what the river is capable of when it exceeds its usual bounds. “I was curious about how the pieces would turn out.” says the artist. “Would they be paintings of destruction and mess or would they show something else. In the end the scenes I focused on show both damage and growth in harmony together.”