As a pioneering abstractionist during the 1970's, Gretchen Albrecht employed vibrant colour and harmonious geometry to document her search for a personal metaphysical cosmology. The swirling worlds of luminous colour that define her mature work unfurl in a delicately poetic dance, conveying the power and the beauty of nature with a degree of intimacy that resonates within the viewer.

Solid, rectilinear bands of colour create spatial depth and contrast geometry with gesture - alluding to a conversation between impulse and intent. In her ambition to render the world in terms of its emotional appearance, Albrecht has infused the potency of experience into an aesthetic that is now one of the most widely recognized in New Zealand. The integration of her signature ovular and hemispheric canvases into our national iconographical language is a testament to her importance as an artist, and her contribution to the cultural history of the country.

In her work, Albrecht is alert to the great and enabling ambiguity in the very act of selecting a colour, allowing a gesture of the hand to move the paint across the canvas, allowing the mind to then discipline the paint and find form for it. Her images often have a stark beauty, but they are not simple. They are aware of history, of art history, as much as they are aware of the world unmediated by art."

-Gretchen Albrecht, Colloquy: Three Essays Colm Tòibín, Linda Gill, Mary Kisler, 2015-