Amanda Penrose Hart

5 forests, or the vast stretch of sky over flat farm and grazing lands. But what keeps us in these pictures isn’t so much knowing the landscape, but rather sensing that a story hidden within these works might be unraveled from their details. Returning to these places for her paintings for more than a decade, Penrose Hart has produced a body of work that records the matter-of-fact existence of these landscapes in their shifting season and climate, from summer to winter, from heat to cold, from abundance to drought. This is the story of the work: the play of light on the land, the life that is found there, and the choices made by the artist in her selection of subject and framing. The surprise of Penrose Hart’s painting is that it feels so homely, so knowable, and yet it remains seductive in its ease. But the idea here, the one that resonates with this viewer, is that a moment of contemplation is captured within the picture, and it’s one that can be revisited every time you look at the work. The consequence of these pictures is that we know these places, and that frisson of recognition is immensely pleasurable. It’s a sense of knowing, but it’s also one of truthfulness that’s immensely affecting for the soul. Dr. Andrew Frost is a writer, critic and documentary maker. Since 2004, he has been the editor of The Art Life, and the art critic for Guardian Australia since 2013. He is the writer and presenter of more than dozen documentaries on Australian contemporary art for ABC1, and he directed and co-produced the documentaries My Space Program: The Art of Peter Hennessey [2016] and The Grand Mistake: A Portrait of Mclean Edwards [2017].