'Sleep through the night' Draft Proposal:

Describe the artwork

• 6 x oil on paper works (56 x 76cm), portrait orientation

• Complete by end of September 2021 for gallery

• Expressive mark making, layering, experiments in colour, varying degrees of abstraction

Concept

• Night landscape scenes, painted from memory, maybe with some figures or artificial light sources such as lit windows

• Intimacy, nostalgia, familiarity- contrasted with mystery or magic of the night

• Body to be titled 'Sleep through the night'- alluding to late night parenting, a different world often unseen

• Grouped together to show the diversity of colours and light sources of night scenes but also the repetitiveness of night

Larger Body of work:

• Merging figure with the landscape, push/pull of subject and 'background'

• Ideas of care for children/people interconnected with care for land

• tension between 'natural' and 'artificial', raising children on unceded Aboriginal land.

Artist Bio: Courtney Young grew up on the Far South Coast of NSW and is now living on Bpangerang Country in Rutherglen, Victoria. Courtney is an emerging artist and farmer who holds a Bachelor of Environments from the University of Melbourne. With a background in environmental restoration and regenerative agriculture, Courtney’s practice unpicks what it means to be a white woman and mother living and working in the Australian landscape. Her paintings seek to challenge prevailing colonial approaches to understanding and perceiving the landscape. Through her borderline abstract works, Courtney questions outdated wild/domestic, native/invasive dichotomies and attempts to envision a future for her children.