Sound resonates with Noela

Rosemary Sorensen | Bendigo Weekly | 06-Jan-2012

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CAPTURING AN EXPERIENCE: Noela Stratford with her artworks. Photo: ANDREW PERRYMAN
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After a decade living back in Bendigo, Noela Stratford is still waiting for that moment when the landscape takes hold of her and won’t let go.
“For my work, I have to experience a place with real impact, something that makes me go ‘wow’,” the artist says.
She has tried to find that wow factor on Mt Alexander, but so far, the emotional hit has not happened.
Dr Stratford’s new show, which opens tomorrow at the 2012 La Trobe University Visual Arts Centre in View Street, is the result of a trip to  New Zealand.
She created the big charcoal drawings  following a trip to the dramatic Milford Sound, where crashing waterfalls and misty precipitous mountains evoked for her the emotional power of the German romantic expressionists she most admires.
“It’s taken me a long time to admit it, but I am a romantic,” Dr Stratford says.
“I am interested in the subjectivity of landscape, in not just how something looks, not just a mirroring, but what you experience from seeing it.
“I just loved Milford Sound, always wanted to see it, it hasn’t been messed with.
“It was an experience I wanted to capture.”
Working in charcoal, Dr Stratford has created sensuously soft, deep black works, through which the dynamic white of sky and water shine out.
Born in Drouin (“a landscape of rock stone – I keep coming back to it”, she says), Dr Stratford lived in Bendigo while her children were growing up, then in other parts of Victoria, until returning 11 years ago.
She studied at Deakin, Melbourne and Monash universities, until finally completing her doctorate at Deakin in 1998, with a thesis on the philosophical history of landscape art.
Last year, Ballarat Art Gallery had an exhibition of her drawings which included one of the Milford Sound works, but this is the first time the whole series has gone on show.
In September this year, a new series based on her experience of Cataract Gorge in Tasmania will go on show at the Woodbine gallery in Malmsbury.
She is hoping then, that something in the Goldfields landscape will capture her imagination and lead to a new series.
“It doesn’t need to be dramatic, it can be tranquil,” Dr Stratford says.
“But it has to have impact.”
Contemplating the Sound, drawings by Noela Stratford, is on show at the VAC Access Gallery until January 29.
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