Tarn McLean

Dr Tarn McLean is an artist and designer holding a Doctor of Philosophy in Visual Art from the University of Southern Queensland. Her work departs from a highly disciplined practice embedded in early to mid 20th Century Geometric Abstract painting to the design of space and architecture, including wall painting and public art as well as textile, wallpaper and accessory design.

The Duochrome Colour Series represents one of the most personal and resonant strands within Tarn McLean’s practice. These works are anchored in the exploration of colour as both presence and environment, creating fields that are at once intimate and architectural in their effect. Each painting begins with a foundational ground of a single colour. A second hue is then introduced, thinned with medium so that it hovers across the surface without closing the edges or concealing the first layer. The paint is guided by the brush yet released to chance; sliding, pooling, and ultimately settling into stillness. McLean’s process leaves visible traces of movement with subtle washes, soft veils, and occasional evidence of the brush itself. Edges remain porous, allowing glimpses of the underlying colour to flicker through, producing moments of vibrational intensity. The resulting surfaces function as moody and atmospheric colour fields. They hold a sense of quiet dynamism, inviting viewers to engage at multiple proximities. Up close, the works reveal their painterly facture; from a distance, they radiate as expansive planes of mood and resonance. Installed within architectural interiors, the paintings operate almost as living entities, capable of shaping atmosphere and offering a contemplative, even spiritual, dimension to space.

The Duochrome series is situated within the lineage of colour field abstraction, while extending its vocabulary through a phenomenological emphasis on presence and perception. McLean’s approach echoes the meditative intensity of Mark Rothko while drawing on the insights of philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who regarded vision as an embodied form of engagement rather than detached observation. In this context, the works function not simply as visual images but as spatial experiences; fields of vibration that ask to be lived with rather than merely looked at.

At its core, the Duochrome Colour Series is an act of attunement, an openness to chance, gravity, and material flow, as well as to the responsive dialogue between colour and perception. Each canvas becomes a site where movement is stilled, presence is distilled and colour reveals itself as a powerful force of resonance.