Ondine Seabrook is a Sydney based painter who graduated with a BFA from the National Art School in 2017. She has exhibited across a multitude of group shows in Australia and now presents her third Solo show ‘Princess’.
Seabrook allows her work to be dictated by intuitive process, painting in a fluid nature where each step is a response to the one before. The techniques are varied and exposed as are the materials she uses, aiding to a rawness of decision making which exposes the paintings as multi-layered. The works are pushed around and scraped until they are right. While ‘Princess’ is not a show about landscapes in a traditional sense, the gestures still vaguely represent elements of the landscape and evoke feeling. ‘Princess’ draws on an array of new influences from visions within her world, and seeks to find balance in tying together a refined yet bold use of colour, the predominant palette being playful pink and alluring blue.
Despite a gentle adherence to a more ‘painter’s painter’ approach, ‘Princess’ has taken a different direction with the introduction of ‘tacky’ or ‘low culture’ objects, patterns and text; ‘Princess’ was adopted from a sticker bought at a gas station on a road trip through California, and fishy shapes are like the distinguished paint-shadow of a rubber goldfish kid’s toy or a novelty rubber shark. In filtering, elevating and eventually painting these objects born of a decorative, playful kitsch, Seabrook creates a chain of low and high art culture.
In recognising the beauty of Seabrook’s chosen objects and retaining their elevation through paintings, her work swims between high and low, serious and playful, dark and light, tempered and wild, but always seeks balance in the exploration of feeling.
- Posted in 2019
- Tagged Ondine Seabrook