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Naomi Howard

Watershed: An exhibition of paintings by Naomi Howard

By Gay Hawkes

Exhibiting this work is truly a watershed for Naomi Howard. The paintings, executed over the fifteen months, represent a torrent of work which is expressive of her passion for certain places and their people. This passion was born in the child and lies deep within the mature and widely experienced woman, subterranean wellsprings to be tapped at will.

In this exhibition we are invited into three places, Central Australia, Queenstown and Cockle Creek, Tasmania. "These places are all one. I belong to all of them", she says.

Of the Central Australian landscapes the artist says they are her energies manifested rather than places... certainly last year when we painted side by side in the Olive Pink Arid Zone Reserve in Alice Springs under the desert sky it was intimidating and impressive to watch her sure touch with paint and the brilliant canvasses growing. Many years of familiarity with outback places in WA, NT and Queensland inform these works. They speak of the exotic, of roaring rusted crags, of glowing heat, the fall of cataracts and the proliferous economy of desert plants.

Canvasses rolled up each morning or drying beside the swag under the desert sky - temperatures around zero in the mornings, red soil as close as breathing - this is real knowing of the land. These paintings not only speak with tenderness, they seem to shout with joy.

Then with a studio in Queenstown, Tasmania and patient familiarity built up over six years Howard has been able to capture and document another place that steals her imagination. Driven before the rain, beneath towering Mt Owen, black cockatoos and sodden growth we experience the west coast through these works.

They weave narratives "even when there are no people", marrying the prosaic and the bizarre. They tell stories of a sort of lost world: Spion Kopf, the Empire Hotel, the Paragon Theatre, Pyengana Mine, the old EBR to Burnie, the Iron Blow and the dear abused Queen River. A world where people mend things; where men know their role "hunting and a' fishing and a' shooting, chopping and burning".

More than two decades ago Howard was lured south from Queensland by Tasmania's chill southern forests and their rich timbers. She recently met up with Bruni D'Entrecastaux's "Voyage to Australia and the Pacific" and the rooster he presented to the people of Recherche Bay before he left. Inspire by his inimitable descriptions she camped out again at Cockle Creek.

It will be difficult to describe my feelings at the sight of this solitary harbour situated at the extremities of the world, so perfectly enclosed that one feels separated from the rest of the universe... With every step one encounters the beauties of unspoilt nature, with signs of decrepitude, trees reaching a very great height... crowned with everlasting green foliage". So this exhibition has a wide catchment area but Howard describes her paintings as an inner weaving.