Keeping Time is a series of large-scale works on paper by Echuca based artist Ellen Lee, shaped by sustained observation of Banyula State Forest. Working with watercolour, graphite and natural pigments, Lee traces shifting light, seasonal rhythms, birdlife and subtle environmental change. A restrained palette of organic hues is layered with stains and residues gathered from the landscape, including leaf tannins, rust and other found matter, each carrying its own history. Gestural graphite marks, drawn from blind contour studies, build surfaces that register time, transition and repeated looking.
Developed, washed back and reworked, each work mirrors the slow transformations of the bush - environmental transitions of overnight rain, patterns of well-worn paths and repeated use, shifting waterlines, and the continual reshaping of the land. Lee’s works become an accumulation of these moments; layered surfaces holding observations, environmental transitions and acts of keeping time.
Ellen Lee, Landscape; of sight, of sound, 2023, watercolour, graphite, and natural pigment on cotton paper, 200 x 339cm. Photo Leon Schoots.