Passage: Descent

This painting continues my exploration of landscape as a psychological terrain—an inner topography shaped by memory, rupture, and return. In Passage, each work traces a movement through states of mind, and this piece marks a moment of descent: a passage through layered thresholds where clarity erupts and dissolves in equal measure.

The cascading waterfall became a way to articulate the experience of being carried through time—sometimes willingly, sometimes by force. Its multiple tiers and sudden divergences mirror the way memories split, recombine, and surge through consciousness. I paint the water not as a literal element but as an active force, a current of thought or emotion that cuts through the accumulated weight of experience.

The surrounding terrain emerges from thick, gestural marks of red, green, and black—earth that feels both ancient and unsettled. These strata are the sediments of the psyche, material that has been shaped by pressure, heat, and the slow erosion of years. As I worked, the landscape became less a place and more a state of being: a reminder that the inner world is never fixed, but constantly shifting underfoot.

In this painting, the waterfall is not simply a descent but a release—a surrender to movement, to change, to the inevitability of transition. The painting captures the tension between collapse and renewal, between fragmentation and flow. It marks a point in the journey where the mind enters a deeper chamber, confronting both turbulence and possibility.

Passage is a long meditation on how we move through our own interiors. This work stands as one threshold among many—an image of falling through, of letting go, and of finding a strange, unexpected clarity in the rush.

Follow

Janet Elizabeth Thomas is a Sydney-based artist working across painting and sculpture. Her artistic career began in 1981 when she became assistant to renowned sculptor Nicholas Georgouras. In 1984, a portrait she painted of Georgouras was selected for the inaugural Salon des Refusés exhibition.
A visit to New York in 1982 exposed Thomas to the city's contemporary art scene and broadened her artistic vision. Her enduring interest in Greek culture, language, philosophy, and history later led her to complete a Bachelor of Arts at Macquarie University, majoring in Philosophy and Ancient History.
Thomas has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, including the Eddis Glastra Gallery, Paddington (1987), the Australian Museum's WIRES exhibition (1990), and Artists Against War at Casula Powerhouse (2004). She is listed in Max Germaine's Artists & Galleries of Australia.
Following the death of Nicholas Georgouras in 2020, Thomas began carving sculptures from the remnant marble left in his studio. Using Georgouras's direct carving technique, she creates works that unite painting and sculpture through the use of marble, pigment, egg tempera, and oil. Her practice explores transformation, memory, mythology, and the origins of human artistic expression. Through both sculpture and painting, Thomas seeks to create images that resonate with the collective unconscious and speak to enduring human experiences.