Cheryl Peebles Muirson
Dip Teach; Dip. Art and Creativity (Honours)

'Silent Witness'
Emerging Isolated Landscapes

This exhibition is about the link between emotional and spiritual ideals and isolated, mystical landscapes in which I investigate displacement and identity. The images of the New Zealand landscape create a visual and emotional history and record a sense of solitude, calm, and discovery of self.

Works portray the sensation of forms emerging and dissolving in mist or being engulfed and revealed by storm clouds and light. My interpretation of landscape is influenced by direct engagement and collective memory. Exploring the relationship between photographic images and the process of painting, the work hovers between fact and fiction.

Ideas of longing and belonging beyond the everyday are explored from different viewpoints. I have used images as an opening from the physical world, into the emotional spiritual world behind the eye, an opaque memory that is often distorted by perception.

Many of these works originated while exhibiting at Gallery O in Christchurch. Christchurch City and Hagley Park were engulfed in fog and images emerged from the fog with the rising of the morning light revealing their true forms.


I use art to enhance my social conscience. In the past I have supported charities such as Breast Cancer Canterbury, Christchurch Women’s Refuge and Child Helpline. After the tragic loss of a young family friend, I have decided to direct this exhibition’s focus on Youth Suicide, hoping to make people aware of the community’s great loss at losing promising young people to depression and despair.

In the Chamber Gallery until 26 March 2009.

Presented by the Waimakariri Community Arts Council

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