Gift from the Sea

Elizabeth Barnett

Madeline Gordon Gallery, Launceston Tasmania, October 2025

The works I am exhibiting in Gift from the Sea have developed out of my artist’s residency at Merryway Spring Beach, Tasmania. Being afforded the time away from family and responsibilities was a balm to my creativity and I found it intensely inspiring. Arriving with the intention of soaking up the spirit of this beautiful place meant I was able to simply let my mind wander, creating connections between ideas without interruption. Creative isolation and a space to oneself is no less compelling for women artists today than in the early twentieth century, when Virginia Woolf first wrote on this.

Shells, wind-fallen leaves and ocean-worn wood became the still life objects on the kitchen table, which doubled as my studio work bench for the week. The proteas that line the property with their dried and dormant winter forms also became essential props for this stage. From the house evocative views reach across Spring Beach and over to the World Heritage-listed Maria Island, which – once a place of captivity and convict labour – is now a National Park filled with protected flora and fauna. The island hovers like an enigma in the sun-soaked water that surrounds it beyond the coastline of mainland Tasmania.

I created a series of small studies I could bring home with me, using loose and light washes of oil paint and medium. I wanted to capture the essence of the landscape in different lights alongside the collections of shells and natural objects I found on my walks, to see how they connected and interacted with each other. Soft light filtering through the windows enhanced these effects – bringing a new sense of space between the placement of objects – illuminating them and bringing them to life. The connection to place was intensified with a colour palette drawn from the house itself, as well as from a thrifted red-and-white-striped shirt that became a backdrop to my still life arrangements. Oyster shells from a nearby aquiculture farm also became a key source of fascination. Their organic forms and soft cream, grey and pink colouring informed the overall palette and gave shape to new ideas.

This exhibition is named after the title of a favourite book by the American author and aviator, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In this meditative work set on Florida’s Captiva Island, she writes that ‘women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.’ This really resonates for me, and I thought of it often in creating this island-based body of work. I found it incredibly important to reconnect with myself after birthing and caring for my three young children and embracing the small chaos of everyday life at home.

Morrow Lindbergh’s work can best be described as ‘quietly powerful,’ and I hope that my paintings capture a similar feeling. There is strength to be found in the humble still life painting or in the spontaneity and connection to place of work produced en-plein-air.

Returning to my home studio, I found myself recreating still life groupings with the key emblems from the residency, showing the depth of this experience. Windows, oyster shells, the striped shirt and locally sourced proteas has allowed for repetition across this body of work, which seeks always to reconnect with that wonderful feeling of freedom and calm.