Jane Kellahan GOLD RUSH Exhibition

"Key words help me form my paintings; great towering cliffs and water-worn gravel, shafts and tunnels, blasting water, gelignite, rough and nuggety, huge violent rivers,rocky ledges, and vicious swirls.I use details like shovels, dredges, sluice boxes, ladders,pipes, and pans placed within my abstract paintings to tell the stories. I may then add figures. All are records which resonate with emotional and physical intensity. A palette knife, brush and roller are my tools that allow me to paint freely and emotively, like i too, am scraping and digging away at the surface of a canvas to find the treasures within. Fine lines are cut into concrete paste,resembling old roads and magnificent deeply, dug caves.Hundreds of meters deep; thousands of hours worked. 24 ct gold leaf is delicately added.From black to white, light to dark, this contrast reflects the miners labour. Sometimes working in intense summer sun, juxtaposed to freezing cold, deep, dark caves. My objective is to present questions through my art about an exciting era of New Zealand history and how the spirit of the pioneering, rags to riches culture of early mining is reflected in contemporary New Zealand entrepreneurial spirit." JANE KELLAHAN