Sisca Verwoert’s paintings bring together elements of the Otway Ranges with a heightened colour palette and simplification of landmass, vegetation and ocean that presents the atmospheric buzz of a region that is close to our hearts.
In the early 1970’s Sisca Verwoert had sketches published regularly in Australian Vogue and other magazines and worked as a book illustrator until, eager for experience, she then spent years living in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and the Philippines, and travelling to Bélize, Tajikistan, Egypt, Tanzania, Chile, and around Europe. Her experiences as an illustrator and a resident in other cultures have combined to produce vibrantly coloured, sensuous paintings in oil and watercolour.
“When I moved to the Otway coast from inner-city Melbourne the impact on my paintings was immediate. I went from strongly figurative human images to landscape.This group of paintings continues this development: the subjects dense, my relations to the land whimsical, with strange marine and bird life beginning to emerge. I work in a manner that allows shapes to present themselves, without prior planning or predictability, but I spend many hours shaping both the details and the wholes. My aim is to present the audience with an emotional experience when viewing each of my paintings.” Sisca Verwoert.