Twice winner of the John Leslie Art Prize for ‘Best Gippsland Work’, Gibbs is an artist who paints with the eyes of a realist and the soul of a poet. Her acclaimed, atmospheric paintings capture the spiritual essence of the places she depicts, and blur the lines between what we observe, what we imagine, and what we remember.

Heartlands is no exception. An exhibition of paintings gathered from the last decade, the works seek connections with places that are familiar, but which we cannot physically travel to.

While the works depict actual landscapes, usually in and around South Gippsland—specifically Wilsons Promontory and Gibbs’ home at Fish Creek—to access them we must take leave of our earthly senses and float into planes of pure spirit and sensuality.

In her deeply evocative paintings that might better be described as ‘soulscapes’ rather than ‘landscapes’, the physical place becomes a launch site into metaphysical experience.

Earth, ocean and sky become harbingers of memory—whether or not we have actually visited Wilsons Promontory or these other places—enabling us to travel through time as well as space and into parallel realities.

Gibbs presents locations where our hearts lead the way ahead of our heads; these ‘heartlands’ form points of reference for a journey into interiority where our vision is not limited by what we can see with our eyes. We ‘see’, instead, through all the senses awakened and alert to the intense beauty around us.