Liz Sullivan, Reflective Notes - works on paper.
THURSDAY 13 NOVEMBER - SUNDAY 21 DECEMBER 2025
OPENING EVENT: 2PM SATURDAY 15 NOVEMBER 2025
To be officially opened by celebrated artist, Robert Clinch.
Music performance by Sid O’Neil, lead singer of The Vasco Era.
Liz Sullivan
Try and Catch the Wind (detail) 2025
Mixed Media on Paper 64 x 142 cm
Speech Notes: Robert Clinch
I remember once being mesmerised, when visiting the National Library in Canberra, to see an exhibition containing original manuscripts, in Mozart’s own hand.
That these rapid ant-like marks, dancing along five ruled lines, could record, for eternal reproduction and interpretation, a galaxy of deeply-moving sounds, is an awe-inspiring alchemy!
That a talented musician, can sit in front of one of these manuscripts, sight unseen, and instantaneously unlock the visual code, and in real time, play the melodies that flowed from Mozart’s fertile mind, is one of our greatest cultural blessings!
All this, all the more remarkable, when standing before these fragile sheets of paper, and picturing these magical marks, being applied by a mortal hand, not dissimilar to my own.
Unlike me, Liz Sullivan is musically literate. She has studied theory, and learned to play piano and the violin.
She will tell you, in her typically modest way, that she has performed at Dallas Brookes Hall; in the back row of the second violins of a School Orchestra!
Unlike me, she has also studied Fine Arts at a tertiary level.
But in spite of starting our creative careers along such different paths, and finding ourselves painting in such different ways, we have some things in common.
We have both, over the years, created images along musical themes. We both enjoy the influence of literature and history, and have fun applying hopefully pertinent, and sometimes humorous titles to our works.
Liz, as I do, often listens to music when she paints.
And her music? An eclectic range, dependant upon the artwork, or simply her mood. Or, on occasion; total silence!
In the early mornings (and Liz rises early), the sanctuary of her studio is sometimes only orchestrated, by the emerging sounds of the awakening world around her. The music of the birds, the music of the trees, the accompaniment of the breeze.
She sometimes works on more than one painting at a time. And into her compositions flow; the rustle of grasses, the trickle of brooks, and the almost auditory sparkling of light; garnered from different places, on different travels; made manifest in darting, dancing, dazzling marks; each anticipating white canvas, transformed into a visual symphony of colour!
The figurative facts are all there, along with a myriad of spontaneous expression! Energetic, nervous, joyful notes; a splash of aqua here, a counterpoint of sunset-orange there, or a dash of fleshy pink! The natural greens and purplish-greys accompanying the melody.
And right now those little black ants and their linear pathways, have found their way from the sound-system to the canvas, subtly intertwined with the elements of nature that sing their song.
So what we are seeing is Liz treating these quavers and semi-quavers as visual symbols, where the rhythm of their shapes are as relevant as the rhythm of their time-signatures. She has transposed them from musical calligraphy, to visual art; while simultaneously, imbuing her visual gestures, with musical vitality.
Robert Clinch artist and friend of Liz Sullivan's discussing her work
ROBERT CLINCH, (Brief Biography, 2025)
*In over forty years of professional art practice, Robert has worked in a broad range of media: egg-tempera painting, water-colour, gouache and dry-brush painting, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and an ‘art-car’.
*He has exhibited extensively throughout Australia, for over ten years in New York, and in Hong Kong.
*A mid-career retrospective of his work, Fanfare for the common man, was staged by The Art Gallery of Ballarat in 2013.
*This was followed in 2014 by a major survey-exhibition, Sounds of Silence, with The National Museum in Szczecin, Poland.
*His ‘art-car’ exhibition, Objet D’Art, toured Australian Regional Galleries for over two years, between 2017 and 2019.
*His work has been the subject of a feature-length documentary, D’ART, (an official selection for the 2020 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival); and two books, Robert Clinch; Fanfare for the common man (in 2013) and d’ART: The Art of Robert Clinch (in 2007).
*Robert has won a number of national art awards, including the Wynne Trustees Water-Colour Prize (in both 1989 and 1993), a Martin Bequest Travelling Scholarship (in 1993), and a State Library of Victoria Creative Fellowship (in 2012/13).
*His work has been purchased by the National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of N.S.W., State Library of Victoria, and the State Library of Queensland; along with Regional, City, University, Corporate and significant private collections; with numerous artworks specifically commissioned.