The Fat Of The Land

“The Fat of the Land” : The best or richest part of anything.
The landscape in a small country town in Victoria where my home is situated just metres from the
rolling hills where potatoes and onions grow and sheep and cows graze has been my subject for a
few years now. Although my work is predominantly studio based, I walk the very landscape daily
with my dogs, subconsciously absorbing the colour, texture, patterns and constant change all
around.
My paintings are very layered and full with a very intuitive colour palette. The underpainting and
mark making is deliberately covered up and rubbed back over and over again. It is the process of
time and to build a true surface that exhibits history and substance is what is of importance to my
practice. I rarely use brushes, I feel it is so important to be as close to the work as possible,
drawing, squeezing paint directly from the tube, turning the canvas upside down, sideways,
throwing buckets of pigment and turps, letting it all fall as it should. I can rarely make a painting on
the first attempt, a painting is a physical extension of my thoughts, my desires, my subconscious
dialogue as visual non representational form.
I have always loved the accidental nature of abstraction, its playfulness and its anger, its
connection to my emotions. I don't often like marks I deliberately make, so I get rid of them and
swap hands. I like the oppositeness … I like stopping a painting when most would keep going. I
like the composition to be in an awkward state, just as nature predicts. Nothing is truly perfect or
ordered.
I have a vision of what I want to make, but it is the journey through the process of the making that
determines the work’s finale. This is the joy, the unknowing of it all, the fear, the courage,
everything ….
My paintings are the result of risk.
Vanessa Oter, 2017

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