1990
'Mitchell painted from memory. From “landscapes [she carried with her] – and remembered feelings of them.”
With an eclectic memory, she turned these feelings into colour then swiped, scraped, splatted and lumped them like wads of gum on the canvas. She created panoramic spaces, holding patterns. Everything that happened, everything she saw, became framed and frozen in motion, “like a fish trapped in ice.”
In Marge, these feelings are both somehow constrained and expansive, exploding in radiant tangles like a carefully choreographed firework show.
Look at the way the paint drips, red into blue, yellow onto white. The paint has a life of its own; caught in a moment yet uncontrollable.’

 
These words are by writer and photographer @VictoriaLHannan. Read the rest of her reflection on Marge in the Sep–Oct 22 Issue of NGV Magazine, available online at ngv.melbourne/ngv-magazine.

Marge
1990
Oil on canvas
195 x 228 cm
National Gallery of Victoria , Melbourne, Australia
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/work/97172/