Artist Statement
Val Hudson's paintings engage with the insubstantial, transient nature of existence as expressed through colour and form, the elements, open spaces and the play of light. Val's paintings are influenced by music, dance, poetry, meditation, silence, growing up by the sea, walking the land and travelling in Australia, India and South East Asia.
Val layers oil and wax on canvas then scrapes-back to create pieces that are contemplative, meditative and mysterious. They are textural, intimate, paradoxical and poetic and engage with the potential of emptiness and silence.
Val is a painter drawing on a wide spectrum of ideas and influences. Her paintings present a dreamlike quality of ephemeral spaces punctuated with half seen evocations of memory, experience and sensory imaginings. The content of her paintings are the starting point of a conversation with the viewer where the language is not just visual but emotive and evocative with a subtle potency of shifting illusive signs and symbols. There is a sense that the viewer is invited to decipher meaning through their own non-verbal, non-cognitive contemplation. The paintings are also imbued with a strong visual presence because of their human scale and strength of colour and composition. To fully appreciate Val’s painting, one needs to stand in front of one until the internal noise quietens.
