Lesley Duxbury

'My most recent work exhibited this year at Galerie Dusseldorf, Perth, in March and at Niagara Galleries, Melbourne in June, was unashamedly influenced by the English Romantic artist, John Constable, particularly by his cloud studies on "skying". Through its absence of physical limitations, I took the omnipresent, timeless sky as a symbol

Through the use of mezzotint and graphite in Shadow the text progresses from black through pale grey to white and back again to black reaching the lightest point where the text reads "Very bright fresh grey clouds" emulating the passage of a cloud over the sun and analogous to the drawing out of an image from the darkness of memory. The phenomena of nature and light, romantic pre-occupations, are inherent in the techniques I choose to work with-mezzotint, emboss-ing, photography and dusting of graphite.

Not only does the viewer complete the work as interpreter of its internal narrative, he/she also completes it genealogically -across time, reuniting past to present. The suggestive texts invite the viewer to engage with the work without the intrusion of the artist.

Source: Lesley Duxbury, quoted in Imprint, Spring 1994, Volume 29, Number 3, p.3