Skimming the Surface – Art Exhibition by Robyn Leeder

This Solo Exhibition by Woodend artist Robyn Leeder is the culmination of her art practice since she began pastel drawing in the mid 1980’s. Slowly over the years her art practice morphed and in 2012 she discovered printmaking. While her choice of mediums may have changed and developed over her four decades as an artist the core focus of her art has remained. To use picture making to capture slow travel.

Walking through the landscape, you see more detail and with a finer focus. You experience the weather first hand – shifting mists, wild winds, approaching rain squalls, flashes of brilliance as the sun penetrates a leaden sky to shine a spotlight on a high-country tarn or a stretch of silver sea. Narrow valleys open up to grand vistas and leaves cast interesting shadow patterns on a rock. A bush track emerges at a sheltered beach, a stream or viewpoint. These are the moments Robyn strives to capture.

The processes of relief and intaglio printing opened up a whole new range of possibilities for picture making compared to pastels– some precise, others almost accidental. But my objective remains the same – to draw attention to the moment, the play of sunlight and shadow, a tree bent by the wind, a bird’s soaring flight or an animal’s expressive tilt of the head.