The highest aim of creating these works is to offer the viewer an invitation to the realm of beauty beyond form.

Nerina Lascelles

A CONVERGENCE OF FIELDS

The art of Nerina Lascelles inhabits an otherworldly atmosphere in which forms and symbols have begun to soften and dissolve, and viewers find themselves conveyed into mysterious beyonds that emerge in the serene light of alluring distances.

Lascelles’ journey has followed the relationship between transcendence and art across a range of Eastern philosophical traditions within which visual art and poetry are used as aids to meditation: a practice that explains why we can read poetry by Zen poet Matsuo Basho as one might take bearings by consulting a navigational instrument.

If, for instance, on a walking tour over a mountain range, we fell ill and were compelled to convalesce at a wayside inn, our deeper thoughts and dreams may well carry on regardless. They would, we can only imagine, attain ever loftier heights, while penetrating ever further into imponderable distances.

Sick on a journey –

over parched fields

dreams wander on

Matsou Basho, 1694

It is the otherworldly vistas encountered on these latter expeditions that Lascelles has chosen as the principal subject for her art.

A DISSOLUTION OF DIVIDES

Tao and this world seem different

but in truth they are one and the same

Lao Tzu, c. 5th-century BC

Lascelles’ development has been informed as much by the formal study of art as it has by culturally focused field trips abroad – to China, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Tibet, Nepal and Japan – with the challenge always being to attain a dissolution of divides by deploying techniques and mediums amenable to the visual arts. Through a discerning and intuitive selection of materials and an acquired mastery of fused layering techniques, Lascelles makes possible the necessary passage for receptive viewers.

The diverse materials, that can include encaustic wax, Chinese silk, Japanese Kimono embroidery, joss and washi paper, original screen print designs, as well as organic objects gleaned from the natural world, encourage a thoughtful and unimpeded exploration of form and symbol and an ease of movement across notional expanses of space and time, while the process of encaustic layering creates impressions highly conductive to meditation and introspection, as of consciousness entering a still lake’s reflective depths.

A QUALITY OF LIGHT

When the opposing forces unite within

Lao Tzu, c. 5th-century BC

While the prospect of transcendence is suggested by form and medium, it is ultimately conveyed through a quality of light: an otherworldly light altogether inseparable from darkness. Indeed, Lascelles achieves a captivating chiaroscuro in which light longs for darkness as darkness longs for light, and to assuage their mutual longing she has conspired to bring about a covert rendezvous.

So rather than overexposure or all-encompassing darkness, there is everywhere present a preternatural glow: a glow Tanizaki, in his inspired treatise In Praise of Shadows, would no doubt have favourably described as a 'pensive lustre', for even the opaque in Lascelles’ work serves as a clarifying lens for the soul.

As a consequence, Lascelles has overseen the emergence of an art that is as arresting by day as it is transporting by night, especially when a low and gentle illumination is brought to bear, thus imbuing brighter colours with living phosphorescence, while her looming planes of darkness burgeon with possibility.

The overall effect, which is invariably conveyed with subtlety, suggests the proximity of a finer field of consciousness, that flows through, and extends beyond, the mere forms of this world.


Selected Solo Exhibitions:

2024 Solo Exhibition, & Gallery Australia, SOrrento

2023 The Open Space, Yering Station, Yarra Glen

2021 Resonance, Eagles Nest Gallery, Aireys Inlet

2019 Transcend, Yering Station, Yarra Glen

2015 Karisome – Transience, Yering Station, Yarra Glen

2014 Yūgen, The Light Factory, Eltham

2013 Japonism, Long Gallery, Montsalvat, Eltham

2012 Oriental Infusion, Manyung Gallery, Mt Eliza

2012 Recent Works, BrownKortes, Kangaroo Ground

2011 Seizui, Long Gallery, Montsalvat, Eltham

2010 Sonzai – Existence, East and West Art, Kew

2010 Shinzui – Essence, Yering Station, Yarra Glen

2010 Mist, The Atrium Gallery, Australian High Commission, Singapore

2009 Kasumi – MIST, Beowulf Galleries, Woollahara

2009 In the Mist , Evelyn County Estate, Kangaroo Ground

2009 Sonzai – Existence, Convent Gallery, Dalesford

2008 Exhibition of New Works, Evelyn County Estate, Kangaroo Ground

2007 Kensho, Evelyn County Estate, Kangaroo Ground

2004 Exhibition of Paintings, Café Au Go Go, St Kilda

2001 Sadhana, Eltham Art Space, Eltham

1997 Honouring Tibet, Dilemma’s Gallery, North Melbourne

1995 Indigenous Influence, Labrys Gallery Space, Collingwood

1994 Recent Works, Labrys, Fitzroy


Selected Group Exhibitions:

2023 Omnia Art Prize, St Kevins College, Toorak

2022 Group Exhibition, Qdos Fine Arts, Lorne

2022 Landscapes of Nillumbik, Gallery 7six5, Watsons Creek

2020 SheBuilt - Women in Art, North Melbourne

2019 Reverb, Post Office Gallery, Ballarat

2018 Masterworks, Eltham College, Research

2015 Alumination, Art Gallery of Ballarat, Ballarat

2014 Masterworks, Eltham College 40th Anniversary Exhibition, Eltham

2014 Eastern Inspirations, Manyung Gallery, Mt Eliza

2012 Artist’s Open Studios – 25th Anniversary, The Light Factory Gallery, Eltham

2011 Spring Exhibition, Architect’s Gallery, Richmond, London, UK

2011 April Exhibition, Manyung Gallery, Mt Eliza

2010 Group Exhibition, Tina Cooper Gallery, Eumundi, QLD, Australia

2010 Threads, Bright Space, St Kilda, Melbourne

2010 Untitled Group Exhibition, Contemporary Collectors, Singapore

2010 Women in the Arts Festival Exhibition, SCWO, Singapore

2009 Untitled Group Exhibiton, Galerie Bophavy, Noosa Heads, QLD, Australia

2009 Collector’s Exhibition, Contemporary Art Society, The Steps Gallery, Carlton

2008 Untitled Group Exhibition, Kazari Collector, Prahran

2006 The Nature of Things, Fitzroy Gallery, Fitzroy

2005 Nine X Five, Art Streams Gallery, Warrandyte

2005 Shrine, Fitzroy Gallery, Fitzroy

2004 Movement Within the People, Eltham Art Space, Eltham

2003 Visualising Pure Realms, Eltham Art Space, Eltham

2002 Meditative Paintings, Lovegrove’s Winery, Cottlesbridge

2001 Mama Serpentine - A cry in the Wilderness, Dudley House, Bendigo

2000 Meditative Thoughts, Eltham Art Space, Eltham

1999 Three, Eltham Art Space, Eltham

1998 Review, Eltham Art Space, Eltham

1998 Journey & Myth, Mair Street Gallery, Ballarat

1993 Post Graduate Exhibition, Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Ballarat


Collections

Various Private Collections in Australia, UK, Italy, Singapore, America and Japan.


Education

2002 Diploma in Experiential Arts Therapies, MIECAT, Melbourne

2001 Diploma in Transpersonal Art Therapy, Ikon Institute, Melbourne

1993 Graduate Diploma in Visual Arts (Painting), Ballarat University, Victoria

1991 Bachelor of Arts / Visual Arts (Drawing), Ballarat University, Victoria

1988 TOP Visual Arts, RMIT, Melbourne