Tilley Wood’s exhibition, titled Equinox, opens at the SEVENMARKS art gallery on September 21, the day before the 2024 equinox, when the sun is directly above the equator, marking the beginning of longer days in Australia. 

“I live in Tasmania, where our lives are deeply influenced by the sun. Winter here is long and dark, making me acutely aware of the seasonal changes. The equinox is powerful because it signals the shift to a time of year with more sunlight than darkness. To me, it marks the start of my most active, happiest, and brightest season,” says Wood.

Wood is an artist who enjoys looking at landscapes at different times of the year to see how the different seasons affect the colours and lighting of a particular place. A lot of her paintings in the Equinox exhibition feature similar landscapes that evoke vastly different emotions.

“I like how similar times of year look in different environments. Last equinox I was in the Northern Territory and since then I’ve been back in Tasmania, so comparing what spring is like there to here, there’s something really interesting in contrasting those two landscapes,” says Wood.

Wood’s process often begins with mixing colors on the canvas, allowing shapes and landscapes to emerge organically. 

“I usually start with whatever colors are in front of me, playing with them until memories and shapes appear. The painting Big Hill, lutruwita / Tasmania originated from dark colors and circular shapes, gradually evolving into the landscapes I know so well,” says Wood.

Wood went to the University of Newcastle for Natural History Illustration and she says that the degree taught her technical skills and how to paint realistically, but ultimately she has found herself departing from this style of painting.

“I started learning how to paint and draw in a super realistic, hyper fine way. That was a starting point for me in oils - to paint more realistic, but then working in the medium, what I love about it is the textures and how the colours sort of do their own thing when I mix them together,” says Wood.

“I find that there is more interesting stuff to me in my paintings when I let it come out a bit more freely without trying to control it or represent anything precisely. In the past when I’ve tried to produce things that are more realistic, I get further and further away from the feeling of what inspired me about it to begin with.”

On top of her paintings in her SEVENMARKS exhibition, Wood also has created sculptures working with wood and dried flowers. She says that all of these works were inspired by the same feeling, and that when she set out to create the exhibition she wanted to do all sorts of different things to make the experience more interactive.

“I really didn’t want to just create a room with pictures on the walls that people are just looking at. I wanted to make a more physical space that people are a part of, rather than looking at something that was outside them,” says Wood.

With her exhibition, Wood sets a milestone for the SEVENMARKS gallery as she becomes the first early-career artist to hold a solo exhibition in the space. Being originally from the South Coast, Wood says it was a no-brainer for her to present her work at the Kiama gallery.

“Being from NSW I’ve always wanted to come back there and have more of a life there and present my work. So when the opportunity came up I thought, absolutely I can’t say no. It feels really good to be asked to exhibit in a space that is a really contemporary gallery that does work across all mediums,” says Wood.

Wood’s work is very immersive and satisfies all of the senses. After viewing her paintings for an extended period of time you begin to hear and smell the environments and even see them moving through time.

The opening night for Tilley Wood’s exhibition Equinox is Saturday, September 21 and her work will be featured in the gallery until October 12.