Gemma O’Brien

STOCKROOM

Gemma O’Brien is an internationally renowned designer and artist known for her bold graphics, illustrative lettering and murals. Her work has been commissioned by Apple, Nike, Tiffany & Co, Google, and The New York Times. Outside her commercial design work, she explores language, nature and the human experience through art practice. Seasons is her fourth solo show at China Heights Gallery.

ARTIST STATEMENT

"Seasons is a series of paintings and drawings created over the last twelve months in my studio in Sydney. With more time at home due to cancelled international projects and travel, I welcomed the chance to take in my immediate surroundings. Staying in one place prompted a deeper looking out and looking in. I paid attention to simple things and found inspiration in the small experiences of this new life. I took the ferry across Sydney Harbour in January and noticed a crescent moon above Shark Island. In April, I started learning ‘Spring Song’ on the Cello. When lockdown resumed in June, I would walk up and down Oxford Street at night and notice the extra-bright stars that later revealed themselves to be planets. My notebooks were filled with phrases about the weather, feelings, and the changing of seasons.

In the studio, I started with smaller studies on paper in coloured pencil and pastels before moving to larger canvases and working in acrylic. This became a series of flat, graphic ‘poster-paintings’ structured around Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer, and everything in between. I looked to other planets’ weather patterns as a way of contrasting those on Earth and used the seasons as a metaphor to let go of my expectations around what was seemingly constant and familiar.

Unlike my previous work, I became less interested in illustrating specific elements from nature and more drawn towards representing sensations of shifting light, motion and atmosphere through bright colours, repeating lines and unadorned typography. I wanted this body of work to describe a time that was defined by brilliant peaks and dark spirals but with a consistent undercurrent of optimism. I am beginning to welcome a new experience of the world through sensation, not merely language, and Seasons is a record of this time.