‘The Light Between’

This Divisions Gallery is delighted to present The Light Between, a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Lana Daubermann. Lana is an emerging painter working in still life and landscape genres and was one of the initial resident artists in Pentridge Studios. For this exhibition, Lana takes us to quiet spaces along the Merri Merri (Merri Creek), a respite of green that is so valued to the local community.

Over the lockdowns countless residents visited the Merri Creek. As the ‘5KM radius’ restricted people’s access to nature, it also highlighted the lack of public green space available in the densely built suburbs of Brunswick, Coburg and Northcote. Like many, Lana gravitated toward the Merri regularly walking her two Havanese dogs, Maggie and Oscar, along the trails.

The bush surrounding the Merri Merri (‘very rocky’) as we see it today is only a few decades old. In 1976 Bruce and Anne MacGregor campaigned to restore the sections nearest to the water’s edge, saving the neglected waterway from becoming a major freeway. We now enjoy wattle, river red gums and black cockatoos where there were formerly rubbish dumps, concrete depots and vast tracks of untamed weed.

It is today’s Merri Creek that we see in The Light Between. The title hints to how Lana interprets landscape. She uses a method where the sky is painted back in amongst the dark mass of trees (most evident in ‘Sky Study’), playing with gesture and negative space. Her perspective is often sweeping – such as the blurred dusk in ‘Nocturne 1’ – but descriptive, seen in the textured surface of leaves in ‘Silver Wattles’ (the flowering of which is cause for relief – signaling that winter is almost over).

Lana’s work is highly observant to colour and light. Her bright greens in ‘December’ reflect the lush grass our summers have seen after months with plenty of rain. In contrast, ‘Walking Late’ suggests the wintery months or damp evenings. Standing back, we notice that The Light Between has no paintings depicting miserable weather. Perhaps this is in part because Maggie refuses to get her feet wet?

The Light Between depicts what many of us sought from the Merri over the lockdown: escape. Titles such as ‘Pixies this way’, ‘He Loves it Here’ and ‘A Little Solace’ suggest how vital this green corridor is, particularly while movement and human contact was so restricted. After a nearly a year in isolation the Merri, with its seasons and dense flora, became as close to wild as we could get. It seems to be this that Lana has gone for in her paintings; a place with no city, people or buildings. Just the private corners where she could be by herself in a way where she could choose how.

Written by Charlotte Watson, Divisions Gallery Manager and Curator

Lana Daubermann is an Australian artist based in Melbourne. She mainly paints in oils, focusing primarily on landscape painting and still life painting.