UNDER THE CANOPY OF A LOST PARADISE
N\H PROJECT SPACE

Adam Nudelman doesn’t simply paint the earth and sky. He captures something beyond the landscape: traces of human presence, quiet echoes of migration, the tension between belonging and isolation. Under the Canopy of a Lost Paradise confronts these complex cultural and social narratives, where the political and social undercurrents of Australia’s past and present collide.

Nudelman’s works are neither purely realist nor wholly abstract; they occupy a space that feels like a dream, where time flows differently. This exhibition, whilst nodding to the familiar landscapes of his home in South Gippsland, evoke something far more universal: a lost innocence, a place once known but now distant. The constructed imagery of mountains, water, and skies speak of nature’s vastness, but they are not untouched. Amongst the grandeur, we find markers—guard towers, skeletal structures—remnants of migration and settlement that feel both familiar and ghostly. Like lonely sentinels, the detritus stands as quiet witnesses to a history of displacement: not intruding, but integral to the story Nudelman tells. They remind us that paradise is never without its scars, and that even the most serene environments carry the weight of our shared history.

His paintings have become smaller over the years, more intense, as though the world they depict is shrinking; becoming more concentrated, more urgent. Yet within these smaller canvases lies a universe of complexity. Every brushstroke is a careful consideration. The luminous surface of each painting is saturated by the layers beneath it. What we see is only part of the picture; what lies beneath informs everything.

It is in this labour of creation that Nudelman’s mastery unfolds. In the Dutch tradition of painting from which he draws, there is a reverence for the way light touches the world. First, the pigments are ground by his own hand, and anywhere between 20 to 40 layers of paint are then applied, each stroke a meditation on colour and texture. His method allows light to emerge from the depths of the canvas, creating an optic luminosity that feels as if it might vanish the longer you look at it—like the afterglow of the sun as it slips below the horizon. It is a technique that grounds his paintings in centuries of artistic heritage.

In the spaces between the layers of paint, Nudelman builds an ineffable relationship between light and shadow. Light is not merely an illuminator, but a living character—a quiet companion. The shadows are not simply voids, but echoes of lives lived in the margins of these landscapes. They operate as a third person—always present, yet unseen. Neither fully formed nor completely absent, they linger on the edges of the picture plane as silent witnesses to what we, as humans, leave behind.

Nudelman’s landscapes strike a tenuous balance between a fragile beauty, and the unsettling sense of something forgotten. The landscape is not merely a backdrop for Nudelman’s ideas, but the very fabric of his narrative. These contemporary allegories are meticulously crafted on the periphery between what we have seen and what we remember. In these unpeopled spaces, the earth and sky are bound tightly together, two opposing forces that hum with a melodic urgency. In the foreground, he deliberately leaves space for us to enter, reflect, and feel the weight of the world in its quietest moments.

Under the Canopy of a Lost Paradise suggests a longing for an unattainable, idealised world—a paradise that has been misplaced. Nudelman asks us to consider what it means to belong to a place, to a history, to a memory. His paintings are not just about landscapes—they are about us, the traces we leave behind, and the shadows that follow. Nudelman’s work invites us to not just see the light, but also the darkness that shapes it. He offers us no easy answers, only the quiet certainty that there is still beauty to be found in even our darkest moments. Perhaps a glimpse of paradise still remains.

Anthea Mentzalis
October, 2024