Will Neuhaus

A pale sun breaking through pearl clouds

A pale sun breaking through pearl clouds is a land collaborative diptych exploring a conversation between myself, the physical land, and natural light. A direct rubbing with locally sourced charcoal is made of the ground within the Bow Valley Provincial Park; this composition influenced by the textures of compacted soil is paired with an automated cyanotype made at the same time within the same space. The resulting work is a collaborative effort between the artist and the land, documenting a conversation between humans and nature spanning the Anthropocene.

Biography

Will Neuhaus is a multidisciplinary artist and fine art student from Cammeraygal country in modern-day Sydney, Australia. Their work exists within a contemporary land collaborative practice critiquing western traditions of landscape art. Neuhaus utilises materials foraged from agriculture, forestry, and the landscape to create work that expands the creative fields of photography, painting, and drawing. Neuhaus incorporates lessons on materiality to develop a practice where the land and our interactions with it are centre stage. They hope their work can act as a stepping-off point for larger conversations around land and water autonomy within our contemporary society.

Light study 02; Cyanotype

Light Study 02 uses an automated cyanotype process alongside direct shadow tracing to explore light as a collaborative partner. A sensitised canvas was left in my window overnight and developed in water in the morning. The resulting composition was entirely made by natural light and reflections from the moon and rising sun. After development, the now fixed image was sewn into a canvas for stretching, and a shadow cast by my Asparagus fern was directly translated onto the canvas to finalise the composition. By allowing nature to directly form my composition, I am able to facilitate a conversation between the indoor gallery visitor and the outdoor natural world.