Art / Sue Lovegrove, “Waterholes and Wetlands”, Sue Lovegrove. At Beaver Gallery until April 11. Reviewed by ROB KENNEDY.

EXPLORING her relationship to place, Sue Lovegrove’s landscapes of Tasmania and waterholes of Central Australia offer an evocative representation of the many facets of life in and around these lands.

This exhibition shows how, if you look closely for long enough at something, that can lead to an expansive world that opens up extended ideas and stories

The patterns in former Canberra artist Lovegrove’s works display a mesmerising miniature world with a spacious view. The large and small-scale works hold the same amount of detail and finesse, yet the end-results are very different.

While not one of these paintings is titled, other than a particular numbering system, the art speaks for itself. To create such detail in so small a work as 8×6 centimetres, even over a sequence of four measuring 8×24 centimetres, they are a miniature world as expansive as the real thing. They make you feel like you are standing in a wetland, or on the edge of a glorious landscape.

Lovegrove studied Persian miniature painting at the Prince Foundation in London in 2015. Clearly, that was time well spent, and a lot was learnt. The number of marks in these tiny artworks are in their thousands and they create a complete and compelling unit.

One of the beauties of these paintings is that it is not just the landscape that is reflected, but  the sky, the clouds and the weather. Many feel wet with an aquatic life and abundance.

Created over a wide colour spectrum, these 17 works tell a story of the hidden and overlooked minute world of an unspoiled earth. The three larger works differ greatly from the smaller watercolour and gouache paintings. The aesthetic comes from another viewpoint, and I assume a different place, too.

The larger works don’t seem to invite you into the mystery of the environment as much as the smaller paintings do.

All the places in these works look like spaces that humans have never touched, and that would be a rare and special experience, as are these artworks. Even if a viewer stands right back from the smaller works, the image is still recognisable and delicate, maybe more so in some. A few even offer an alternate view from afar, like a cloudscape and not a landscape.

There is a lot of thought, time and effort that has gone into every painting. They offer a viewer an insight through to another form of life outside our concrete world.