Percy Bysshe Shelley celebrated the coming of autumn as a time when the leaves turn to 'yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red.' Gerard Manley Hopkins described spring as a time 'When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush - a season when nature is all in a rush with richness, teeming with juice and joy.'
Such poetic movement, texture and colour is expressed in the paintings that make up May's exhibition. The artist states that for her, leaves have become a passion. Her works show them as representing life in all its seasons, lushness, activities, moods and mysteries. She speaks of nature as 'protecting, nurturing and healing' but the paintings convey something a little more complex than this. Underneath the colour and the celebration there is just a hint of discomfort and foreboding - the darker side of nature.
The centre-piece is called Seed Protection. This consists of a large wreath-like spiral of eucalyptus leaves. At the centre of the spiral, the leaves are tight and dark and red. As the outward, swirling movement begins, they evolve into brown and gold. The centre is the genesis, the beginning of the growth cycle where life emerges from the blood red earth. It is also the locus of the darker spirits of nature – a pantheistic place. At the outer edge, the leaves fly away like feathers, to begin life in some other form. The spiral is exactly the right form to represent the life cycle. It is a form that never stays still. It spins inwards and outwards in a never-ending pattern of movement.
The Beauty of Rage is another work that carries a note of foreboding. The leaves flare up like flames from a dark, underground, elemental energy. Like musical notes written in a heavy major key, they rise up releasing the 'rage' and the psychological tensions suggested by the darkness. At the top of the painting there are two small green leaves. These contrast with the redness of the flames and promise a new birth into a more harmonious state of mind.
In Feeding Pool life and energy rise not from a dark presence but from a pool of shining blue cleansing and nourishing water. From this, the leaves form towering columns of movement and colour. The strength of their upward thrusting is emphasised by the fact that they appear to be reaching for something, perhaps a light source, as they continue to grow outside and beyond the canvas. They are cut off, rather than contained, by the edges of the painting.
On either side of this exhibit are two more towering columns of leaves entitled Forest Totems I and II. Totems I is in green, spring-time colours, representing the emergence into existence of the life force. Totem II is in golds and browns, as the leaves prepare to complete their life cycle and return to the earth.
Water Bond continues the theme of water as a source of life. Leaves appear to be swept along in a fast moving current. They seem to be absorbed into the blue depths of the water. By contrast, yellow and gold flowers, some concealing smiling faces, float on top, borne along to their new life.
The colours in this show are striking. They are the colours of the elements - earth, air, fire and water - and they are the colours of the seasons - red, blue, green and gold. Reds and greens, blues and golds work as complementaries, each intensifying the richness of the other. They are reminiscent of rich embroidery on black velvet backgrounds.
Andreana speaks of nature as protective and nourishing, but also of its purpose and power. The sharpness of her images makes them a little uncompromising, and this speaks more of power than protection. Their insistence on light, movement and colour, is a feast for the eyes but this also is more suggestive of power than protection.