Grace Cossington Smith
Interior onto a garden
One of the leaders of the modernist art movement in Australia,
Grace Cossington Smith was one of the first to experiment with post
impressionist techniques. Concerned with the expression of form and
emotion through colour, in the 1920s Cossington Smith began to
paint using small blocks of juxtaposed colour along with lines
emphasizing the perspective in her work. The result was a canvas
filled with luminous colour and rhythm - one which she would
continue to explore and develop throughout her long career as an
artist.
Emotion and visual perception were inseparable to Cossington
Smith. When she saw something that made her "feel a colour," that
was what she tried to realise on canvas. Using the same subject
Cossington Smith experimented with different colour ranges to great
effect. In Interior onto a garden the whole scene is
suffused with vibrancy and warmth even though the natural light in
the house was always somewhat subdued because of the verandah onto
which the room opened.