In his series, Refugia, Anthony Tremmaglia explores ideas of regeneration, hopefulness, and solace to tell a story of survival.
Refugia are bio-environments that support small populations of once-widespread species, spanning millennia as habitats to which elements of life retreat under environmental strain.
In the new works, Tremmaglia’s distinctive landscape figurations in paint and charcoal are evolved through a more layered, complex, and intimate rendering process. The artist varies his treatment of intertwining stone to suggest a deeper confluence of land and body and introduces a white chalk that echoes works of the early Renaissance. He infuses bright, rich, contemporary jade and emerald colours to accentuate a previously muted palette.
In nature, and in affairs of the human heart, survival often necessitates reinvention in near-continuous states of flux. Be they mediations on perseverance or the nature of change, the works in Refugia reside at the fluid intersection of the organic and the unyielding, at the axis of time and timelessness.