Jan Murphy Gallery is pleased to present ‘Distillation’ by Sydney-based artist Celia Gullett.

Distillation
Noun

1. the action of purifying a liquid by a process of heating and cooling.
2. the extraction of the essential meaning or most important aspects of something.

Celia Gullett’s atmospheric paintings capture ephemeral experiences in a more permanent form. Gullett’s practice is centred around a reverence for colour and surface. The work can be seen as pure abstraction, exploring presence and absence in equal parts.

“With my latest series of paintings I wanted to investigate what happens inside the peripheral field of vision, that which is outside normal vision, or ‘point of fixation’. Beyond that point things change, a more abstract situation prevails. Gullett explores whether there may be a link between abstraction and this ‘other reading’ we encounter.

‘Distillation’ feels more Impressionistic than my previous work and explores the peripheral domain where things flicker, dissolve, reform, warp and drift, nothing is totally bound. I am interested in extracting aspects of how we see, and interpret to make meaningful paintings. This body of work is a distillation of experience into matter.” Celia Gullett, 2022

Celia Gullett has held solo exhibitions since 2002 and participated in group exhibitions since 1996. Gullett has been a repeat finalist in Sydney’s Mosman and Paddington Art Prizes (2002-16) and exhibited in Singapore (2013), London (2017, 2018) and Sweden (2017). Her paintings are in the Macquarie University Art Collection and numerous private collections both nationally and internationally.

Image credit: Celia Gullett, Interval II, 2022, oil on linen, 84.0 x 61.0 cm (detail)