Exploring the physicality of paint and surface textures Terri Brooks continues her formal investigation into of natural mark making. With a leanness of technique and an innate feeling for surface textures Brooks utilises her materials to produce rich and complex works that speak of creating art out of something humble and ordinary. Following a lineage of artists attracted to marks in nature - including Whistler, Pollock, Tuckson and Mondrian, ‘ a tradition equating marks in nature and marks made by an artist which goes back to Leonardo and his blotchy wall.’1

Brooks states of her practice, “Walking in, looking at, and sometimes photographing my local environment is integral to my painting process. In this respect I am a landscape painter. I live where I grew up, Westgarth, inner city Melbourne. For peace and free association of thought I wonder the private spaces, graffiti scrawled laneways, creek tracks, parklands and old industrial areas near my home.”

She is in a dialogue with her environment and in turn with her canvases, using her observations of the natural and built environment to determine her raw and instinctual impulses to place colour and line. Be it the effect or movement of wind and rain or the weathering effects of sun on a piece of corrugated tin, Brooks essentially is making a statement about the physical nature of disintegration and renewal. “I am a city based landscape artist, the walls and walkways are my hills and valleys. My work is process based but the end result matters. The process is ephemeral, the outcome concrete. I see people as part of nature, not superior or separate, and I am intrigued by the traces of nature left manifest in built world or city, including human activity.” There is a sophistication and simplicity to Brooks’ economy of colour and form. A subdued palette hints at a deeper, complex pattern buried within. In some works, such as Ochre Plain, the artist has reduced the painting to a soft field of simple colour. Only the dripping edges reveal the complexity and multiple processes that have occurred before reaching this final harmonious state.

Brooks has been selected as a finalist in the Fleurieu Art Prize, The Kedumba Drawing Award, and the Alice Prize. Awarded the BP Acquisitive Award and an Australia Council Project Grant. Brooks work is represented in the Neubrandenburg Museum Collection, the Albert Tucker Collection, Macquarie Bank, Westpac Bank and many other corporate collections, as well as private collections in Australia, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany and England.