“Time and Tide is a series of abstract paintings shaped by impermanence — not as loss, but as transformation.
They explore the way memory rewrites place: how land carries remnants of what has passed, while energy continually reshapes what appears fixed.
The works exist in that threshold between erosion and emergence, weight and flow, permanence and change.
My paintings begin as encounters with urban spaces, coastlines, estuaries, and industrial waterfronts.
Yet they rarely remain literal. I am drawn to places where human systems meet natural movement — transitional spaces marked by weather, salt, decay, repair, and rebuilding.
Rather than describing the landscape, the paintings hold its atmosphere, shifting between what is seen and what is felt.
Each surface becomes a record of its own making, holding traces like sediment — marks that gather, dissolve, and reappear.
Colour functions as atmosphere rather than depiction: blue as distance, rust as residue, and pale fields as air, silence, and pause. These forces move with quiet inevitability, and in their cycles, I recognise something human: the tension between holding on and letting go, between presence and absence
The works suggest landscape not as a location, but as an emotional map — where time becomes depth, tide becomes rhythm, and the viewer is invited to inhabit both."
- Mary-Paula Ibrahim
TIME & TIDE
Between Land and Leaving, 2026, Acrylic on canvas Meranti timber float-framed, 101 x 101 cm, $4,400
Sediment and Air, 2026, Acrylic on linen Meranti timber float-framed, 101 x 101 cm, $4,400
When the Surface Breaks, 2026, Acrylic on convas Meranti timber float-framed, 101 x 101 cm, $4,400
On the Nature of Daylight, 2026, Acrylic on linen Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 50 x 50 cm, $1,400
Pressure Field, 2026, Acrylic on linen Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 50 x 50 cm, $1,400
Gravity in Bloom, 2026, Acrylic on linen Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 50 x 50 cm, $1,400
Warm Haven, 2026, Acrylic on linen Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 50 x 50 cm, $1,400
A Place Becoming, 2026, Acrylic on canvas Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 50 x 50 cm, $1,400
Where Light Lands, 2026,
Acrylic on linen Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 50 x 50 cm, $1,400
Facing Blue, 2025,
Acrylic on board Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 25.5 x 25.5 cm, $440
Time Settles into Light, 2025,
Acrylic on convas board Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 30 x 30 cm, $480
Drift, 2025,
Acrylic on board Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 20 x 25 cm, $440
Farfalle, 2025, Acrylic on board Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 25 x 20 cm, $440
Autumn Came, 2026, Acrylic on board Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 25 x 20 cm, $440
Echo Lines, 2023, Acrylic on board Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 25 x 25 cm, $460
What Moves Under the Quiet, 2024, Acrylic on canvas Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 76.5 x 50.5 cm, $1,600
The Compass Inside me, Facing North, 2024, Acrylic on canvas Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 88 x 117.5 cm, $5,400
A Place Made of Many, 2022, Mixed media on canvas Tasmanian Oak float-framed, 70 x 170 cm, $3,400
