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The coast and its varying rivers and tributaries are emblematic of this place we call Western Australia. The beach and its waterways are a vital presence in our lifestyles. Whether on, in, or under, water and its shores are sites for retreat, recreation, and rejuvenation. In literature, the shore often bears a double meaning, a “liminal space” caught between water and land; a geographic purgatory of familiar comforts and unknown dangers. Tropes and truths often overlap to some degree, but inevitably become abstractions in their all-consuming ubiquity. Jaelle Pedroli’s paintings do not depict “liminal spaces”. Instead, these are paintings of sites seen, noticed, and appreciated in their own right—not limbo, but locale.

Jaelle Pedroli has been painting for several years, having picked up the brush after putting down the needle and thread, having been trained in and practiced textile arts. Now keenly pursuing painting, Pedroli finds her subjects along the Swan River (Derbarl Yerrigan): the rocky shores of Blackwall Reach (Jenalup) and nearby Goolugatup Heathcote. Walking along the river’s edge, with its own variety of shores, the limestone cliffs are eye-catching to behold. Along the way, one will see sharp, angular forms protruding from white sands and dusty vegetation like abstract sculptures. Other shapes look like chalky honeycomb, the result of centuries of gradual erosion. Rockpools underfoot. Shrubland to the shore. Perhaps for these reasons, Pedroli often orientates her images inland from the Swan River, toward these spectacular vistas. Her landscapes—such as Looking Place, Nurture, and The Nature of Daylight—wriggle with life. It is a liveliness that is drawn from the wellspring of Pedroli’s subject. Paint is stained, scumbled, and pulled across the surface to form the intriguing abstractions of sheer cliff faces and vibrant shrubbery. In The Nature of Daylight, dry olive greens and dusty ochres writhe into the familiar imagery of Goolugatup Heathcote’s shores.

The Derbarl Yerrigan has been the subject of much image making. To the custodians of this land, the Noongar people, the river has a sacred history. For European explorers, the river the subject of stiff depictions. Throughout the 1800s, the river was a subject for many local painters—often rendered with a stuffy Victoria sensibility. It wouldn’t be until well into the 20th century that anything akin to a “West Australian Impressionism” surfaced. Among the first was émigré artist Elise Blumann. Now remembered for her bold depictions of Melaleuca trees along the banks of the Swan, Blumann foreshadowed the likes of Howard Taylor and Guy Grey-Smith— two major proponents of the Western Australian modernism that was to begin in the 1940s and ‘50s. With Blumann’s arrival, so too came modernism in Perth.

Like Pedroli, Blumann lived nearby to where she would paint along the river; and like Blumann, Pedroli’s fascination for local flora and rock formations profoundly informs her work. The paintings of Pedroli’s that intrigue me most are those that rest between the antagonism of subject and material—where the actualities of paint and the possibilities of illusion are in contest with each other. Path to the jetty, In the shade with purple, and Three blue tree trunks exemplify this tension. Seductively gestural, paint wriggles across the surface. Like her modernist forebearers such as Blumann, Pedroli is as much intrigued by the possibilities of paint as she is by the qualities of her subjects.

Paint and subject—the two antagonisms of a painting. One, the material; the other, its illusion. Two elements: in contestation, never settled, and thus enticing. Paint itself is an alluring material. Pigment and binder are near endless in possibilities. Pedroli pushes paint between lithe layers and gestural globs to depict the subject at the point just before “too much”. To the painter, knowing when to put the brush down is as important as picking it up in the first place. During these intermissions, time spent looking is painting.

In some instances, Pedroli paints her studies en plain air. These smaller paintings brim with dynamic energy. Spending time with her subject is important to Pedroli. To become familiar with the details enough to know what to omit is crucial for any painter. In the sustained contemplation of the subject comes the freeing possibility to take risks, incorporate the unintentional, and push beyond the expected. It is that which separates a decorative and compelling image—one from which we might see something familiar anew. I wonder if it is this tension between subject and material that fellow Colourist Pierre Bonnard meant when he said, sentimentally, that “the principal subject [of a painting] is the surface, which has its colour, its laws over and above those of objects. It’s not a matter of painting life, it’s a matter of giving life to painting”. This “life” is the unsettled nature of a painting—all the paradoxes that rest on the surface—that, at its best, seem to endlessly intrigue the eye and the mind.

Sam Beard

Sam Beard devotes much of his time to writing about art in Western Australia. He is the co-founder and editor of the art criticism journal Dispatch Review and is currently working on the journal's first anthology. Sam has worked in the arts for nearly a decade and held positions at the Australian Museums and Galleries Association, Bunbury Regional Art Gallery, and The Lester Prize for Portraiture. He is the current treasurer of the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (AAANZ) and holds degrees in the history of art from the University of Western Australia and visual art and design from Edith Cowan University.