Yesterday I visited an exhilarating exhibition called Traces by Louise Rippert whom I knew from Monash University days. She was already then doing brilliant work with a highly spiritual aspect and connection. Deakin University Art Gallery in the city of Melbourne hosted a retrospective collection, which is her (?!) first solo show. It is a fluttering of delicate paperish treasures, time capsules of fragmented debris and other sensuous yet serious frivolities.

I realized I dare not purchase her catalogue…as I might be unduly influenced by her discoveries to the detriment of my own art. I want to remember them as the mist of argument – nothing more. I know my outcomes would be dissimilar because I am, after all, a different person. Yet in the presence of true creativity, I can not be certain.

Rippert’s work seems pure and unsullied by the life they honour and document…. as traces remaining in a hallowed framed silence. My art offerings are troubled by their unsettled beginnings and traumatic births. By comparison, I think mine are noisy and demanding like the relentless children I rear, offering tireless challenge rather than peace.

Strangely, I have felt the same attraction yet resistance to the art of Gosia Wlodarcsak and formerly, to the art of Louise Nevelson and Ben Nicholson and Mary Kelly – drawn to them mutually by respect and apprehension.