Marissa Bradley’s paintings have an air of grace, nostalgia and dream. Painted on recycled rimu timber, her soft edged rectangular works are reminiscent of antique writing tablets. Interspersed with elegant text and spindly bedroom furniture, Bradley’s highly varnished surfaces and monochromatic palette establish a finely tuned emotive language.

Bradley’s latest series of paintings Now Close Your Eyes explores the domestic routine of a child’s bedtime and later the peculiar state of consciousness when one is woken from deep sleep:

“As the sun sets, every night has its rituals. Domestic duties call, children to bed. The first star appears, the moon shines, plants cast shadows on the lawn and a moth taps at the window trying to get close to the light. Bed time stories, filled with morals, fantasy and nonsense. Lights out.

“Now close your eyes… Eventually sleep comes for me and not long after it takes hold I am woken up. I attend to someone or something. This dreamy half state of consciousness is a curious time. I wander from room to room only longing to be back in my warm bed, back in a peaceful slumber.” (1)

As with previous series, the detailed spirit drawings produced by the 19th century American shaker sect influences Bradley. She depicts a surreal dream world where objects seem to float within the twilight on the periphery of our vision. Bradley blurs the boundary between real and imaginary, a moth flutters toward a chandelier (Outside Moth), furniture and birdcages are suspended in mid-air (I Am Here Or Elsewhere and Now Close Your Eyes) as she builds her own pictorial language of motherhood, domesticity, knowledge and growth.

1. Marissa Bradley, Artist’s statement, 2005.