In The art that made me, artists discuss works in the Art Gallery of NSW collection that either inspire, influence or simply delight them. This selection by Cressida Campbell first appeared in Look – the Gallery’s members magazine.
‘Her work is a joy to behold in reaffirming, as it does, the opportunity for beauty and intimacy in the most familiar and prosaic of subjects,’ former Gallery director Edmund Capon writes in the forward to The woodblock painting of Cressida Campbell.
But what artists does the Sydney-based painter and printmaker admire? ‘I like a lot of contemporary art but I tend to go back a bit in time,’ she told an audience of her fans at a recent Gallery members' In conversation event. ‘If I’m attracted to a work of art by someone else, it’s usually not the subject, but the way the subject is interpreted, its transformation.’
A similar transformation of familiar subjects often defines Campbell’s own work. It’s evident too in her favourite collection works shown here. As she says of Portrait of a young woman: ‘Although appearing quite realistic, the subtle stylisation of the face, with her alabaster-like skin and rigid head dress, gives us an image from an imagined world.’