“The longer you sit in one remote spot in the bush, the more you become part of it,” Celia Perceval explains. “The landscape really does have a meaning, a character. It speaks to you. Everything is alive. Everything has its place.” For decades, Perceval has ventured out into the bush in search of an unnameable something in the wilderness.
Distinguished arts critic, historian and writer, Tai Mitsuji*, describes Perceval as far more than a traditional enplein air painter. The artist’s process is less about taking control, through replicating the scenery, and more about relinquishing this very thing. “The disorder of nature prevails in her work. Her kinetic brushstrokes are animated by sounds and smells and filled with the unmistakable sense of life in motion.”
“Yet Perceval’s paintings do more than just memorialise a vision of place,” continues Mitsuji. “While most people think of a painting in purely ocular terms—they focus on what they can see—Perceval reaches beyond this. When she talks of her paintings, Perceval evokes a multisensory experience. Her kinetic brushstrokes are animated by sounds and smells and filled with the unmistakable sense of life in motion. Her paintings reproduce some part of what it means not only to look at a place but become a part of it.”
“I always think that a good painting should never just be seen once,” says Perceval. “It should always draw you in and reveal something new. Just like the landscape itself.”
Born in Brighton, Melbourne in 1949, Celia Perceval is primarily a self-taught painter. She developed her inspiration for drawing and painting in the artistic environment created by her parents, Mary Boyd and the late John Perceval, and first exhibited at the age of sixteen. Her earliest mentors included members of Melbourne’s famous “Angry Penguins” group, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Albert Tucker and her father, John Perceval.
*Tai Mitsuji is a writer and curator who holds a Masters (with Distinction) in Art History from the University of Oxford and writes for The Guardian, Art Review, Art Asia Pacific, The Saturday Paper and others.
