A body of work exploring the architecture of stillness — where colour, rhythm, and emotion find equilibrium. Through refined geometry and a mineral palette, each painting becomes a quiet structure for contemplation, evoking balance, poise, and the profoundly human.
Essay — Stillness in Form
In The Mineral Series, Joanna Wolthuizen refines her visual language to its most architectural and contemplative state. These works belong to the movement she defines as Composed Abstraction™ — a discipline of emotional geometry in which colour, rhythm, and proportion cohere into a precise yet meditative order.
Across the series, Wolthuizen constructs a landscape of stillness. Planes of celadon, slate, ochre, and muted gold echo the quiet strata of the natural world — the mineral field that underpins both structure and sentiment. Yet, within this restraint, there is intimacy: the way a horizon hums against pale blue, or a line trembles just slightly between two tones. Her compositions reveal not the chaos of feeling, but the poise that follows its understanding.
The series moves through a lexicon of spatial metaphors — Solace, Vesper, Arcadia, Aether, Anchor, Eave, Meridian — each suggesting a threshold between containment and release. Architectural forms rise and dissolve: roofs, stars, bays, partitions. These are not depictions of place, but architectures of emotion — built environments for reflection.
What distinguishes The Mineral Series is its orchestration of calm. Each canvas operates as a diagram of equilibrium — a structure where discipline becomes lyric. The edges are exact, yet the colour relationships breathe with humanity. Wolthuizen’s geometry, rather than enforcing control, creates permission for quietness; it allows emotion to exist without collapse.
The mineral palette itself acts as a philosophy. Slate denotes depth and intelligence; ochre holds warmth; celadon and muted green evoke breath and renewal. Together, these tones suggest a psychological geology — emotion layered, compressed, and clarified over time.
Seen collectively, the works form a progression from light toward composure. They mark a period in the artist’s practice where order and emotion achieve harmony — an evolution from expression to structure, from movement to stillness. Within this poise lies a quiet resistance: in an age of speed and visual noise, Wolthuizen offers a language of balance, built from colour, line, and grace.
The Mineral Series stands as an essay in refinement — a distillation of architecture and empathy into form. Each painting is both a sanctuary and a statement: a composed reflection of the human need for space, calm, and design in its purest emotional sense.
Explore the full collection — The Mineral Series
Essay written by Joanna Wolthuizen, artist and founder of Joanna Wolthuizen Gallery (Melbourne, Australia).
