Reflections on Shape and Colour Lead to Journeys of Abstraction in the Encounter Series
- Charlotte Wensley
- Aug 1, 2023
- 6 min read
Updated: 13 hours ago
This collection of abstract paintings brought together my liminal approach to art making with more formal considerations of colour and shape.
After completing my Portal Series in early 2023 I spent several weeks re-investigating the work I'd made, through sketch and collage, creating a 'Wall of Curiosities', filled with mini paintings, drawings, collages and visual experiments; all signposts towards abstraction.
I gave myself time to sit with the work, respond to what I could see and allow threads of resonance to surface. This reflection exercise enabled me to unearth clues as to where to go next in the studio.
Shape emerged as the primary consideration, but I also wanted to approach my use of colour with greater awareness and sensitivity, resulting in time spent immersed in researching colour and making small colour studies and sketches. This exploratory work formed the basis of the paintings in this series.
My mind turns often to memories as I'm working, reflecting on places I've been and things I've seen and experiences I've had and these stories weave their way into the work as I contemplate the guiding narrative of each piece.
This is a body of work that reflects on my encounters with shape, colour, process and personal experiences.
There are 18 paintings in this series (2023).
| Candyland
This piece began as process experiment where bold colours and layered textures have come together in a lively dance of collage and paint. Its vibrant forms feel both spontaneous and deliberate, creating a sense of joyful chaos. It invites you into a whimsical world, surreal and brimming with playful energy.
Mixed Media on Board
30cm x 30cm
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| Coming Ashore
Coming Ashore contemplates the drama of 'arrival' — that liminal moment where water yields to land. Layers of shifting colour and the bold gesture of blue evokes the movement of tides. It’s a painting that speaks to transition, belonging, and the delicate balance between journey and destination.
Mixed Media on Board
50cm x 60cm
Framed in Australian Oak
| Echo
This piece hums with a nostalgic rhythm, rendered in a palette of vibrant but soft retro colours that feel both familiar and timeless. Shapes and layers repeat like fading memories, creating a gentle resonance across the painting surface. It’s a contemplative piece, where past and present seem to meet in quiet harmony and where space is held for memories.
Mixed Media on Board
30cm x 30cm
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| Findings
This piece is visual journey of discovery, where layered marks, textures, and shapes reveal traces of exploration. Each detail hints at something unearthed — fragments of thought, memory, or place coming together in quiet conversation. It’s a painting that celebrates curiosity and the beauty of the precious treasures that we uncover along the way.
Mixed Media on Board
50cm x 60cm
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| Lush
This piece overflows with vibrancy, its rich layers of colour and texture evoke the vitality of a generous and flourishing landscape. Sweeping forms and deep, saturated colour create a sense of abundance and growth. It’s a painting that feels alive, a visual celebration of energy. It invites you to contemplate the essence of nature.
Mixed Media on Board
60cm x 50cm
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| Moon Walk
Moon Walk drifts between the earthly and the celestial, capturing the quiet wonder of stepping into the unknown. Shapes and tones suggest both a landscape and a dreamscape, where light seems to hover as if borrowed from another world. It conveys a sense of weightlessness as if drifting through moonlight itself.
30cm x 30cm
Mixed Media on Board
Framed in Australian Oak
| Pilgrimage
Pilgrimage speaks to the pull of an inner journey, a slow passage through shifting landscapes of memory and meaning. Layers of colour and form suggest pathways and thresholds, hinting at both distance travelled and the quiet transformations along the way. It holds a sense of devotion and discovery, as though each step reveals something essential yet intangible.
80cm x 110cm
Mixed Media on Board
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| River Crossing
River Crossing captures the notions of transition, where one edge gives way to another and where a sense of forward momentum exists. The flow of shapes suggests both current and passage, holding the tension between risk and renewal. It evokes a threshold space—uncertain yet full of possibility—where crossing becomes both physical and emotionally symbolic.
80cm x 60cm
Mixed Media on Board
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| Roam
Roam embodies a sense of freedom and open wandering, where form and colour drift in a complex conversation without boundaries. The composition feels untethered, like a journey without a fixed destination, the work itself guided instead by curiosity and instinct, echoing personal sentiments about life experience. It carries the spirit of exploration, inviting you to lose yourself in its unfolding terrain.
80cm x 110cm
Mixed Media on Board
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| Scattered
Scattered conveys the beauty of fragments—moments, memories, or impressions—dispersed yet still connected by an unseen rhythm. Shapes and colours drift across the surface like leaves blowing in the wind, forming an organic pattern of movement. It suggests both disarray and harmony, invites a meditation on how things sometimes fall apart and come together again.
Mixed Media on Board
60cm x 50cm
Framed in Australian Oak
| Secret Cove
Secret Cove evokes the quiet intimacy of a hidden place, sheltered and protected from the wider world. Layers of colour suggest shifting light on water and stone, a refuge shaped by tide and time. The painting carries a sense of discovery and stillness, inviting you to explore its secrets.
Mixed Media on Board
50cm x 60cm
Framed in Australian Oak
| The Alleyway
The Alleyway captures the intrigue of a narrowed passage, where shadow and light play across shifting planes. The composition suggests both confinement and possibility, a place where hidden stories linger in the in-between. It evokes a sense of transition, drawing you deeper into its quiet depths to explore what mysteries lie within.
Mixed Media on Board
30cm x 30cm
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| The Big Edge
This painting came to describe a journey I made many years ago across the Nullarbor Plain and explores the threshold between stability and the unknown, where form and colour meet in bold tension. I have a vivid memory of standing on the clifftop on the Great Australian Bight and looking out to sea, with the curvature of the earth strikingly prominent on the horizon. The composition feels expansive yet precarious, as though poised on the brink of change. It carries an energy of risk and possibility, inviting the viewer to contemplate what lies just beyond.
Mixed Media on Board
50cm x 60cm
Framed in Australian Oak
| The Jetty
The Jetty is reminiscent of a space where land yields to water and solidity gives way to flow. A place where meeting and departure take place. Lines and textures suggest both strength in structure and a fragile decaying of what was one solid. This painting holds a contemplative stillness, evoking the edge of a journey and the threshold of no return.
Mixed Media on Board
30cm x 30cm
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| The Parade
The Parade is a reflection on rhythm and movement; a celebration of colour and form in motion. Shapes gather and flow together, echoing the energy of a festive procession. It conveys a sense of both collective joy and momentum, capturing the spirit of many souls coming together in a vibrant, unfolding dance.
Mixed Media on Board
80cm x 60cm
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| Voyager
This painting evokes a feeling of movement and through unchartered territory, with recurring vessel shapes suggesting a journey outward across a vast landscape and also a contemplative inward exploration of memory and imagination. It speaks to the spirit of adventure and the wonder of charting one’s own course through life, unhindered by the expectations of others.
Mixed Media on Board
80cm x 60cm
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
| Wayward
This piece drifts beyond the boundaries of certainty, embracing the beauty of unpredictability. Its shifting shapes and layered colours echo the feeling of being led by instinct rather than direction, of wandering without a map. Wayward evokes freedom and restlessness, and invites you on a journey that diverges from the path towards a destination unknown.
Mixed Media on Board
80cm x 60cm
Framed in Australian Oak
Original - SOLD
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