While we all have those connections to a place or places, be it from our childhood, a journey, a painting, a photograph or even a dream, the mysterious landscapes of Gill Rocca often subliminally realise those places for us. They may occasionally hint at a narrative – the moon rising, the sun bursting free of a low haze; more often they evoke a feeling, a mood, a transcendental state of being.   

One of the most distinctive characteristics of her practice is her use of birch ply tondos or roundels in the ongoing Figment series. While the philosophical and aesthetic properties of a circle are well established, for Rocca the form accentuates the liminal space between her intentions and what subconsciously emerges during the process of painting. The tondos – and indeed all her paintings - are meticulously layered with thin coats of gesso and sanded back prior to the application of multiple layers of thin oil glazes that slowly and gradually build up the image.