Review: Janenne Eaton's Terrain is evocative and non-prescriptive.

Janenne Eaton can be described as an "artists' artist", someone who is well-known within art circles, admired by fellow artists and who has widely exhibited in government art institutions. She has also spent a large part of her life teaching in art schools, initially at the Canberra School of Art and subsequently at the Victorian College of the Arts, and in both has fostered a band of loyal admirers.

Now aged in her early 70s, Eaton brings to her work the gravitas of a tribal elder, one who has been around for many years (she has been exhibiting professionally since 1975) and has attained wisdom through experience. To correspond with this exhibition is the release of a substantial monograph on her work titled, Janenne Eaton: Evidence - a stratigraphy: 2020-2000. The title of this substantial, unpaginated book that has multiple contributors but not a single author provides a clue to thinking and the working method of this artist.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of monographic art books that follow a linear chronology, Eaton appears to work backwards. She assumes the role of a modern archaeologist involved in a dig, where the first layer uncovered is almost invariably the most recent and as you dig deeper you come across that which was initially concealed from the eye.

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Eaton's early love was archaeology and one is reminded that she studied prehistory at the ANU under Professor John Mulvaney after her initial Diploma in Art and Design from Caulfield Tech in Melbourne. In her practice as an artist, one could describe her as being preoccupied with the archaeology of the present.

Eaton writes, "It's a given that who we are, and what we make, is informed by what we watch and read and think, as well as what we stumble upon, and who we meet. It's true, too, that the least likely material can become the fulcrum for action."

She is also quite a private artist and rarely provides an interpretative gloss for her creations and frequently allows the immaculately finished paintings with their patterned mark making, words, signs and emblems to speak for themselves.

As an artist, she has made the work - in a loving and exacting manner - and now it is left up to the viewer to see if there is a response and interaction. To spell out the creation of each piece would become a tedious exercise where the beholder would inevitably attempt to find in the piece the visual clues that the artist had embedded in its fabric.

One of the standout and very accessible paintings in this exhibition is a medium size oil on canvas (132 centimetres by 97 centimetres) titled Billabong, 2022. It is essentially monochrome with an arrangement of water reeds in the foreground, a faintly indicated horizon line and a scattering of stars throughout the composition. The whole composition is conceived over or within a fine grid, appearing almost like the mesh of mosquito wire.

Interpretation is not prescriptive and my reading of the work is likely to be quite different from anybody else and definitely different from that of the artist who made it.

The gorgeous busy polychrome canvases including Breaking up - dropping out, 2020 and Mnemonic - beautiful fragrant eucalypts, 2022, may be interpreted through free association or, in the case of the latter painting, guided by the artist. Here the artist provides us with a chart of the names of endangered species of eucalypts that can be found encoded within the painting. There may also be a reference to the artist's childhood experiences of walking with her mother collecting blossoms from fragrant eucalypts to bring into the house.

Eaton is a rare artist who creates very cerebral paintings that have a great evocative sense of intriguing beauty.