Elyss McCleary paints from within a vein of lyrical abstraction that is descriptive, as opposed to the proscriptive tenets implied by the quasi-movement within early post-war painting. Fusing memory with materiality, expressive haptics with Art History, along the way McCleary orchestrates a form of physical activity and moving meditation that is both fast and slow, soft and hard, viscous and unyielding.
The titles of her works veer between evocations of the quotidian and passing, to contemplative archetypal spaces - where seagulls spying hot chips are juxtaposed next to mystical snakes slithering across the sky. Linked by a uniformity of scale, the works share uncanny combinations of hue and thinly veiled and translucent brushwork, with the resultant effect creating a curious circularity - one can clearly demarcate where gestures start and end, overlap and merge, however the works defy an identification of start and end.
This effect of eluding elucidation is the mystery of Painting.
Elyss McCleary completed a Master of Contemporary Art, Faculty of Victorian College of Arts, University of Melbourne in 2016 and a Bachelor of Fine Art (Drawing Major), RMIT University, Melbourne in 2008. Recent exhibitions include Open Eye Signal, Fort Delta, Melbourne; The Man with Three Names, LON Gallery, Melbourne; Bedrooms, Rubicon Ari, Melbourne and Estimating a Fort, C3 Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne. Her work is included in the Macquarie Bank collection.

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