Vivienne Ferguson is an artist by calling and a gardener by vocation.

Ferguson resides in the Blue Mountains, where her joint endeavours intersect and the play of light and shade find their way into her studio.

Her dual pursuits are complementary and lend themselves to mutually instinctive responses and observations. Each day begins early for Ferguson, as she rises with the sun and follows its daily route across the sky as she moves through her tasks with pick and shovel or paint and precision. As each day gains momentum, shadows inevitably fall behind tree lines and vertiginous slopes and the day folds into an indigo dusk.

The gardener’s hand utilises specific tools for particular tasks, just as the artist’s hand pushes the brush to produce particular effects. Ferguson’s work quietly dazzles as it employs the movement required in the gardener’s lexicon of skills to depict her sensory responses to the environment in which she lives and works. Ferguson guides her hand across the canvas in gestures evoking the sensations she has identified with her life in the mountains. At times these marks are small and flame-like – the bright embers of the sun filtered through squinting eyes. At other times, the artist’s vision is as strong and sweeping as the winds which blow hard through the bending eucalypts. Each mark has a descriptive purpose and fabricates its visual impact through its association with this distinct and unique landscape.

 Mark Bayly, 2019