Eleanor Millard’s landscapes arrest the speed of life. In her artworks, the furious pace of the everyday suddenly stops, and gives way to a painted meditation.“I try to paint the stillness of the now, with all of its sound,” Millard explains. “The sound of silence; the sound of stillness.”Her landscapes are personal—they represent places that the artist has been and paths that she has walked—yet their power resides in the fact that they hold a universal resonance. The artist’s brushstrokes pull into existence scenes that tug at our memory; they remind us of places that we’ve never seen, yet somehow know.But these meditations can require time to develop. Millard will often revisit artworks that she has commenced but not concluded. “Some paintings I’ll start, and then I’ll have to put them away for a few months, because they just aren’t ready to be finished,” she observes. “If I had kept going with them that day, they just wouldn’t work. I’ve had to train myself to let things go.” The artist explains that sometimes years can go by before she revisits a painting—as she only ever reintroduces herself to a work when the moment is right. In a sense, these artworks embody a collaboration between the artist of the past and the artist of the present, who both work across time, searching for a particular, intangible quality that sets their landscape apart.Excerpt from essay, ‘A Chance Encounter’ by Tai Mitsuji.