“The Country Within”

Brooke van Ruiswyk

“The Country Within” brings together a new body of paintings that explore the relationship between memory, solitude and the landscape. Inspired by Tasmania's north-west region, these works are not intended as literal depictions of specific places, but as imagined landscapes that exist somewhere between observation and recollection. They invite viewers to recognise something of their own experience within them; a place that feels remembered rather than precisely known.

For Brooke van Ruiswyk, the landscape is both an external and internal experience. While grounded in the forms and atmosphere of the natural world, these paintings reflect an emotional and psychological terrain shaped by memory, feeling and lived experience. They become quiet expressions of the artist's inner landscape, where changing skies, softened horizons and solitary forms mirror states of reflection, resilience and renewal. In this way, the country within becomes inseparable from the country without, each continually informing the other.

Throughout the exhibition, the sky becomes a central emotional presence, shaping the atmosphere of each work and reinforcing the sense of solitude that moves through them. Expansive and ever-changing, it reflects the quiet depth found in time spent alone within the landscape. Shifting light and layered cloud formations suggest movement and transformation, while broad horizons evoke openness, calm and possibility. More than a backdrop, the sky invites a slower, more contemplative way of looking, where stillness becomes a place of connection and belonging.

Fog also moves through these paintings as a quiet metaphor for memory. Veiling and revealing in equal measure, it speaks to the way places are remembered: softened at the edges, partially obscured and reshaped by time. It slows the act of looking, inviting patience and reflection. Together, sky and fog create spaces where certainty gives way to feeling, and where the emotional landscape becomes as significant as the physical one.

While grounded in the landscapes of Tasmania, these paintings remain intentionally open, allowing personal memories and experiences to complete the narrative. They suggest that the places we carry within us are often those that have shaped who we are, revealing that our deepest sense of belonging may exist not only in the landscape itself, but within us.