Golden light and autumn colour

Landscapes and botanicals: Susan Nethercote is showing her first solo exhibition in Soldiers Hill. Photos: EDWINA WILLIAMS

AS a child, Susan Nethercote would take trips to the high country with her father, visiting Bright and Porepunkah.

Decades later, memories of moments shared in the area’s mountains and forests have inspired some of the acrylic paintings in the visual artist’s first solo exhibition, Autumnal Dreamscapes.

The full-time painter of eight years’ signature botanical style, popular amongst her more-than 75,000 Instagram followers, also features prominently.

“I really wanted to create a cohesive concept,” she said. “There’s two major stories going on here; botanicals and autumnal gardens gone to seed, and autumnal landscapes, but the palette carries right through.

“I’m known for really bright botanicals and gardens, so this is a deliberate step away.

“These autumn colours are the palette that I love, and this exhibition of all new works has been an opportunity to paint what I want to paint.

“The landscape work is very new, and the response has been really strong, which is encouraging.”

Painting landscapes is a new avenue for the visual artist.

Many of Nethercote’s paintings capture the day’s golden hour and she said Ballarat’s one of the best places to see and capture that light at sunset.

“Autumn is such a magical time of year in this town because we are cool climate and have the trees changing colour with the seasons,” she said.

“Particularly the golden evening light at that late-summer, early-autumn time of year, I love. I just sit out on the veranda in my garden, and they’re the moments that I want to bottle.

“The calm, the peace, the serenity is what I seek to capture.”

On weekends, Nethercote has been sitting in the Old Butchers Shop, her exhibition’s venue, and the Soldiers Hill local said she has enjoyed meeting neighbours she didn’t know before.

Autumnal Dreamscapes is open at there until Sunday, 27 November, on the corner of Neill and Seymour streets. Acrylic on canvas, mixed media, and watercolour works are for sale.

Nethercote will record a live episode of her Studio Insider art podcast at the gallery today, Saturday, 19 November at 3pm.