“Miena (Oval),” 2025

James Brown

“Miena (Oval),” 2008

Pastel on wood panel

Size: 35.5 x 27.8 cm 

I have a leaning towards rounded formats. I guess they feel softer for the eye and invite an inward gaze—a tunnel-like vision of the man’s perspective. With oval and circular shapes, I find that the curved border can sometimes make the image seem like an object floating within its surround—especially at the corners of the panel. While this isn’t necessarily an artist’s problem, it’s an issue that catches my eye and can interrupt the inward journey into the pictorial space of the work. 

My “solution” here was to gently soften the edges of the oval and introduce linework into the otherwise blank corners of the panel, helping them to appear more integrated into the composition. 

This pastel went through many changes—scraping, washing away, layering—almost like a battleground with a history of shifting and accommodating to “get things right.” The scene itself—a view through treed scrub in Miena, Tasmania—may not have been of utmost importance, even though it held memories of a past trip. It simply served as a framework to build the image upon.