Catalogue Essay | Jaelle Pedroli: Open Earth

Since childhood, Jaelle Pedroli has been compelled by the interconnectedness of the natural world. Growing up in Boojarah (the Southern Forest region of so-called Western Australia), many of her earliest memories are set within the dynamically layered greens of lush wintertime forests or crowned in the uncertain blues of uninterrupted dawn skies. Pedroli engages with natural forms as vital sources of life: beating organisms with which we breathe the same air. Over the last five years, Pedroli has intensified her focus on painting, further developing an impressive skill set and creating prolific bodies of work. Yet, informing each of her buzzing works, are the decades of weaving through breathtaking landscapes and looking, diligently. Years of quietly existing alongside, and practicing the delicate art of paying attention, are rewarded in paintings that hum with life. 

In Pedroli’s work, there is nothing of the picturesque stillness that sometimes haunts landscape painting – a too-familiar veil of sleep that stifles the dynamism of teeming ecosystems. Instead, the artist guides colour and form to recall experiences. She recreates moments spent within each familiar, bustling place. This is evident in the tension between chaos and control that simmers throughout Open Earth. In Cool Touch, for example, Eucalyptus leaves hang downward to disrupt the rhythmic ripples of a gently rising tide. Expressive brushstrokes and soft tonal shifts interrupt the river’s glassy surface so that both reflection and branch playfully fade in and out of focus. Such slippage produces an elegant formal confusion evocative of the swaying performances of low-hanging branches dancing across shimmering water. This fluidity is contrasted by the larger leaves that feature along the left and right sides of the composition. Here, Pedroli sharply defines forms and works gradually to build up layers of cool green and warm yellow. In excruciating detail, we see the sunlight that twinkled freely upon the river, now beaming through each fragile leaf to light up its delicate skin. Each illuminated like stained glass. Pedroli’s expressive and varied formal treatment is mesmerising. 

Consider See and Feel, with its brushstrokes that begin slow and precise at the centre of the composition but grow loose and open-ended toward its outskirts. There is no crisp ending or futile attempts to distil. Rather, increasing flux suggests that the work is but a window onto a much greater whole – expanding and swirling outwards far beyond view. At times, Pedroli allows glimpses of underpainting to shine through her painterly marks. In See and Feel, sparsely applied paint on the outer-left side reveals the warm yellow with which this piece first began. The flatness of the pale amber underpainting contrasts with voluptuous streaks of winding mauve purple and sour cherry red. The juxtaposition of the underpainting receding gently backward and the vibrant, organic brushstrokes stretching forward is a beautiful ode to the experience of gazing across water-filled rockpools. Pedroli captures the illusive elongation that occurs when sunlight lands across a shallow pool. A trick of the light that – evading the formality of a camera’s definitive lens – is normally reserved for eyewitnesses alone. 

The artist’s varied approach to mark-making invites a sense of movement that fuels each work’s evocative inclination. This is evident too in Wind. The artist’s experimental approach in creating this piece, of working from a video as her studio reference, is translated in the work’s refusal to be known. Blurred lines of thinned paint sweep sensuously across the composition, clouding viewers’ access to the intricately painted grasses below. The artist recreates the sensation of examining something carefully, intensely. As we look deeper into the thicket, the frontmost strands begin to elude us, softening into gentle fuzz. A delightful mimicking of the human eye when faced with such a feast as this; little yellow heads bursting through quiet sections of soft pastel green, deep browns indicating greater depths below gnarling ivory stems, and cool purple roots evading the gaze by hiding just beyond view. 

Each piece is a harmonious, communicative whole. Pedroli’s resolved inconsistencies of mark-making and richly varied formal approaches are mediated always by colour. Royal purples, electric greens, and aquamarine blues may sound like unexpected choices for natural subject matter, but each is brought together to appear effortlessly organic. Under Pedroli’s nurturing brush, each place burns as vividly as a glowing sunset – and is just as inexplicably real. This engaging treatment of colour is reflective of her laborious artistic process. When visiting Pedroli’s studio, I noticed a series of six small paintings. Each depicted the same water-lapped rock in a different family of hues. She explained that she begins by painting studies ‘en plein air,’ testing out different colour palettes. Through observation and experimentation, the artist develops colour schemes that consider the quiet depths of each place. In Open Earth, we too are invited to experience them. 

Open Earth achieves a remarkable feat in capturing for viewers playful tricks of light, water, and wind – the lively qualities we enjoy when bodily moving through a place. In each exhibited work, delightful decisions to let go of control are balanced by contrasting sections of carefully regulated brushstrokes, and joyfully harmonious colour schemes. Swaying branches, ebbing reflections, and glimmering sunlight vibrate from each canvas, board, or page, as from life.

The text shown on this page is reproduced from Jaelle Pedroli's catalogue essay from her 2025 solo exhibition, Open Earth. See more about Jaelle, here: https://www.jaellepedroli.com