Susie Dureau | The Letting Go

The Letting Go 

'I often look to nature for techniques of living and being. The answers are all there, crashing with the waves and meandering through loamy root systems. “Be like water,” martial arts star Bruce Lee once said, “adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.” And with these words, Lee opened Western minds to the idea that grace can disarm violence.

Clouds are excellent teachers, adapting their vaporous form to the weather in a perpetual state of emergence. Clouds embody the paradox of surrender - what appears as frailty is, in fact, a tremendous strength. And when things get too heavy, it rains, and the vapours that rise off the wet earth allow the clouds to start over.

The paintings in this exhibition, The Letting Go, are also paradoxical. The pigments gathered from the earth are mixed with heavy, sticky oil and reformed to represent airy motifs. The paintings can be thought of as meditations in themselves, not just for what they depict but for how they came to be, as art objects, changing form as an act of surrender.'

- Susie Dureau, 2022

A fantastic interview with Susie & Larissa by Barbie Robinson from Living Arts Canberra can be found here: 

https://www.livingartscanberra.com.au/podcasts/visual-arts-interviews/