Inside, the myriad lines are more pliant and bending, fortunately limited to canvas, and quietly glowing in luminous colour laid upon canvas. This is new work, post-quakes and post- Katie Thomas's impressive recent show of large drawings and canvases at the phoenix-like Chambers Gallery. It is 11 months since the February 22 earthquake struck. Thomas was at the Arts Centre SoFA Gallery hanging her Painting MFA show. Of course it never opened.

Displaying an increasingly muted palette, the studio works in progress feel both assured and exploratory. Their interwoven layers convey space and depth yet are positioned neither in front nor behind. This quality also allows the sense of being lost in something woven and microscopic – the interior workings of a stem, the fragile dust on a butterfly's wing – or of entering a vast dreamtime landscape.

The deliberate micro/macro push and pull in Thomas's painting reflects a direct and uncynical response to living nature – something that is regularly seen in and expected of indigenous Australian painters, but is scarce elsewhere. In timbre, these works would sit well alongside paintings by Australian Aboriginal artists such as Emily Kngwarreye (1910-1996) or Australian landscape painters such as the great Fred Williams (1927-1982). Their supple lines also link them to the works of American artists Cy Twombly (1928-2011) and Brice Marden (1938-). Thomas admits an affinity to these painters' work, and carries a particular regard for Williams, who displayed a similarly skilled, intuitive response to the limitless subtlety and structure of natural landscape.

Thomas's work is the opposite of knowing showtime razzmatazz. Its openness and serious intent makes it feel like something increasingly elusive and valuable.

We're delighted to have invited Katie to be the 'Pagework' artist for B.167. Look out for her work in the magazine in March.