Article on Cover Art by Deb Candy, Alternative Law Journal*, 2023, Vol 48 No. 3
SAGE Publications
*AltLJ is based at Monash University but independently run by volunteers from universities, law firms, & legal centres from across Australia.
Time standing still
Where is she heading in the twilight, the young girl featured on our cover, with her purposeful stride? Or is there, perhaps, a slight hesitancy brought on by the unknown? As she nears the top step, we’re left wondering … what’s over the horizon?
Our cover art, Even now I think of her, follows a theme of Memory and Time that has intrigued artist Cynthia Breusch, forming a basis to her work over the years.
This image, based on vintage home movies, creates, as the artist describes it, ‘an illusion of time without end; “present” time is forever slipping away but in the filmic “parallel universe” it is perpetually Now; we get to live Forever.’
Explains Breusch, ‘In their radiant colour and spectral atmosphere, old home movies have an enchanting surreal quality of “everlastingness” to them.’
Certainly, we’ve all experienced the delight in flipping through vintage photo albums or revisiting footage of family life caught on home movies – a portal providing a glimpse of an exact moment in time.
As Breusch says, ‘out of the seemingly ordinary, grand universes of memory, fantasy or reverie unfold.’
Breusch enjoys stopping the film at a precise moment which ‘contains a feeling of the eternal or an element of mystery from a lived story. What I choose is then manipulated and interpreted during the painting process to heighten these qualities.’
Queensland-born and educated, Cynthia Breusch lives and works in the Blue Mountains. She has held more than 35 solo exhibitions, participated in numerous exhibitions nationally, in Japan and the US, and has been a multi-finalist in major awards including the Portia Geach Memorial Award (Australia's most prestigious portrait award for female artists) and Darling Portrait Award (National Portrait Gallery).
And her aim? ‘Most of all, in these uncertain times, I want to celebrate the beauty and commonality of the human spirit.’
Breusch’s paintings and drawings are represented in public and corporate collections and are held in private collections worldwide.
Cover art: Even now I think of her (Study)
Acrylic on canvas (2023)
30.5 cm x 41 cm
Cover image courtesy of the artist
© Cynthia Breusch