PROVENANCE
Paul & Kerry Barber Collection Purchased from a Dowse Art Museum Charity Auction, 1/11/04

In 1981, Gretchen Albrecht completed her first hemisphere painting, consisting of two large quadrants bolted together to form a semi-circle. This became an acclaimed stylistic format for her work, and she went on to produce a number of other hemispheres in the 1980s and 1990s. In creating these semi-circular works, Albrecht was consistently bold, scaling them up and down, and experimenting with a range of different mediums and paint application techniques.

The sweeping brushes of paint and two-toned sharpness of Night Mist, Diptych is energising to behold. This work is powerful in the way it connects us to the tensions and oppositions of life. Just as the two quadrants exist as one and alongside each other, so too do we encounter the duality of nature, the universe, our bodies, and the existence of our light and shadow selves.

The space between the two quadrants is especially potent, being where the two sides come together and are most obvious in their division. In and through this space, the work is both at one with, and at conflict with itself. The satisfyingly symmetrical exchange between blue and yellow makes it difficult not to see this painting as a perfect whole, or even as a double whole. At the same time, it is only half-formed in a way, and we are acutely aware of the semi-circle's missing other half. In both art and nature, it is the shape of the circle which represents infinity and completeness, and Albrecht does not grant us this completeness. Instead, she instils a sense of absence in the viewer, leaving only the promise of completion. In this way, the painting suggests the absence of another half; an implied void. As Albrecht herself described it, "the hemisphere implies space. A shape to contain the feeling".