Dr Jacqueline Scotcher’s art practice is interested in painting what it feels like moving through particular environments. A path motif in various forms has emerged in her work to explore bodily movement. The paths weave into abstract layered compositions that take lived sensations from the external world into imaginary terrain.

Passage Series, 2026

Movement through landscape has been a constant theme in Jacqueline’s practice. Her latest ‘Passage’ series captures the process of physically and mentally moving from one place to another, a quality travel invites. 

The series was born from road-trips inland; driving from the green hinterland of the northern rivers south-west towards Armidale, Mudgee, Orange. When painting, sensations of the trips were recalled; unfolding terrain, changing landscapes, weather, light, a sense of journey and freedom. Most compositions began with a broad asphalt coloured brushstroke wending across the canvas, this was the entry through a new passage of imagination through painting. The layered surface is an accumulation of impressions, guided by signage ‘markers’.

These paintings are an echo of the Australian landscape, the atmosphere experienced travelling through it rather than a fixed vista. Painting allows for a tactile connection to the ephemeral beauty of road-trips; to linger in this receptive state