Carle Hessay 1970 Above the Yalakom

Carle Hessay: Above the Yalakom

"Analogous to some of the works of Emily Carr and the Group of Seven, this painting reveals an interest in the fluid patterns created by the overall design. The dense tangle of dark conifers and grey wind-fallen trees that screen the forefront of the picture, like the articulating leaden outlines of a stained glass window, serve to reveal more fully the vast slopes of mountainous terrain that surge toward an unrevealed horizon. Wet enamel colours experimentally allowed to flow or bleed into each other add to the suggestiveness of the painting and create abstract rhythms.

There is a spring-like feeling of freshness in the air...An outcropping of pink granite rocks, so loved by the whistling marmot in these regions, forms the immediate base of the picture, the platform to which the viewer has climbed to ascertain his whereabouts." From Leonard A. Woods, Meditations on the Paintings of Carle Hessay (Trabarni, 2005).