PROVENANCE
Private Collection, Auckland

EXHIBITED
Gretchen Albrecht Seasonal/Four Paintings, Artist's Project, Auckland Art Gallery, 13 December 1985 - 7 March 1986 Curated by Alexa M Johnston

ILLUSTRATED
p. 58 Gretchen Albrecht Illuminations, Ron Brownson with contributions by Mary Kisler and Bronwyn Fletcher, Auckland Art Gallery, Toi O Tamaki, Godwit, 2002

p. 139 Gretchen Albrecht Between Gesture and Geometry, Luke Smythe, Massey University Press, 2019

Front cover:
Gretchen Albrecht Seasonal/Four Paintings, Auckland Art Gallery, 1985

REFERENCE
p. 136,137, 287 & 257 Gretchen Albrecht Between Gesture and Geometry, Luke Smythe, Massey University Press, 2019

Gretchen Albrecht Seasonal/Four Paintings, Auckland Art Gallery, 1985

Gretchen Albrecht Illuminations, Ron Brownson with contributions by Mary Kisler and Bronwyn Fletcher, Auckland Art Gallery, Toi O Tamaki, Godwit, 2002

For a 1985 solo project at Auckland City Art Gallery, Gretchen Albrecht made four works which addressed the cycle of the seasons; Ardour, Blossom, Exile and Orchard (for Keats). They were made using a technique she had been testing since 1984: the addition of sweeps and strokes of oil paint to her stained acrylic grounds. This two stage painting process allowed her to add texture to the hemispheres in the form of discrete strokes of oil paint. It also allowed her to develop tonal contrasts between opaque passages of oil and translucent washes of acrylic. Leveraging these new possibilities, she created her most painterly and chromatically varied hemispheres to date, each compelling in its own right but also redolent of the season that it referenced.

The imagery of Exile, the cycle's winter painting, was informed by two key experiences: her observation of the Southern Alps at sunset on a flight to Dunedin, and her recollections of a verse from Ovid's Metamorphosos, in which winter is personified as an old man with icy hair. The glinting pink tinged snowcaps of the alps give the painting its prevailing tonality. Its central blasts of chilly blue can be seen as a hanging beard or frozen tresses.

Reference:
Gretchen Albrecht between Gesture and Geomentry Luke Smythe, Massey University Press, 2019

Words, as titles are an intrinsic part of Gretchen's paintings, leading us over the decades through the milestones of human existence. Her love of poetry is equalled by her acute observation of nature in all its fire and beauty - Mary Kisler