Ella Zaccazan
Winmalee High School
HALCYON DAZE
Drawing
Prismacolor on Stonehenge paper
My body of work conveys the essence of Australian summer - its warmth, spontaneity and quiet nostalgia. Inspired by my childhood in Port Macquarie, each coloured pencil drawing represents family photographs as moments suspended in light. My intention is for the soft edges and candid compositions to communicate the fleeting simplicity of those days, celebrating the beauty found in ordinary, sun-soaked moments.
My artmaking practice has been influenced by the study and interpretation of the following artists: Amii Harwood, Maude Ovize, Lana Del Rey.
Marker's Commentary
Halcyon Daze is a series of small, postcard-sized coloured pencil drawings that capture the essence of an Australian summer, its heat, dryness, and long, slow afternoons in the backyard. We can immediately see that the artist has taken inspiration from family photographs of childhood. Ordinary moments are reimagined as something quiet and nostalgic, each scene suspended in warm light. A gentle narrative runs through the collection, where small details become the focus, and the everyday scenes are given a real emotional pull. Drawing techniques are handled with skill and sensitivity. We see a wide range of textures and patterns, the weave of the flyscreen, the parched grass, a considered control of light and dark and a saturation of colour.
The compositions are cropped in interesting and deliberate ways, rewarding close looking through small, well-observed details, the tan line on the ankle of the man in thongs, his face and body cropped from the frame, or the bare patch of worn ground behind the Hills hoist. The mundane becomes engaging here, from the view out through a flyscreen onto a dry lawn and across the road captures that feeling of being inside on a hot, empty afternoon, waiting for something, anything, to happen. Both the use of materials and the ideas are consistently sustained across the series. This is a tender and accomplished body of work that finds genuine beauty in the ordinary, sun-soaked and nostalgic.