29 NOVEMBER - 12 DECEMBER, WEST PERTH

"Eleanor Millard’s landscapes arrest the speed of life. In her artworks, the furious pace of the everyday suddenly stops, and gives way to a painted meditation. “I try to paint the stillness of the now, with all of its sound,” Millard explains. “The sound of silence; the sound of stillness.” Her landscapes are personal — they represent places that the artist has been and paths that she has walked — yet their power resides in the fact that they hold a universal resonance. The artist’s brushstrokes pull into existence scenes that tug at our memory; they remind us of places that we’ve never seen, yet somehow know.
"There are two sides of the singular artist. Here, we find paintings that are calm, and considered, and paintings that are unhesitating and visceral. This first group of landscapes reflect the artist’s practice in its most sensitive and process-driven form. Layer upon layer of paint underpins these soft compositions, which blur the line between abstraction and representation. “I wet the paper and then I work on it, and then it has to dry and then I wet it again,” Millard recalls. “Timing, air temperature, weather – all of these things affect the work.”
"In the second group of landscapes, the gentle brushstroke is replaced by a swifter, more urgent sequence of painterly marks. These works are bursting with raw vibrancy and energy. “These paintings come out really fast and then they are done,” Millard says. “I don’t know how long they take, because, when I am painting, I don’t even know that I am doing it. It’s a form of meditation.” (from a 2021 essay on the artist by Tai Mitsuji)