In this new exhibition of paintings and drawings, Dutch-born Australian artist Lotje Meijer continues to draw on her life studies of native birds that live around her bushland studio in the Blue Mountains. Over the years the birds and Meijer have reached a point of rare mutual trust, sharing comfortable proximity and silent conversation. Meijer presents her subjects on a larger-than-life scale, creating the effect of greater intimacy between the image and the viewer.

Meijer’s Dutch legacy – strength of technique, sensuous delivery of well-articulated observations and conceptually resolved imagery – continues to underpin her work. She has developed a distinctive textural, almost sculptural, method of building the surface of her paintings with generous layers of oil pigment that she uses in many of her works; heavy impasto laid down next to thin delicate shapes. Flat elements serve to heighten the experience of the three-dimensional.

Meijer’s Blue Mountains environment is habitat to many species of native birds that are astonishing and extraordinary to someone who grew up in Northern Europe. Unjaded by familiarity, she is able to bring a unique perspective to the portrayal of Australian birds.

Sandra Warner
Curator, writer, art historian

Lotje Meijer was born in the Netherlands and has exhibited nationally and internationally. She studied at The Academy of Arts Minerva in Groningen and subsequently lived in Amsterdam before immigrating to Australia.

For further information, please visit lotjemeijer.com