Ondine Seabrook


AVAILABLE WORKS

“Trouble in paradise unearths the beautiful and scary sides both in nature and our psychology. The combination of dark and light and that sweet spot in the middle that makes life so exquisite. Like when you are floating in the water and imagining both the magic underneath you and the monsters. Even the monsters are stunning.

This body of work layers and combines images of nature that don’t necessarily make sense together but neither does the world and we don’t have to make sense of everything.

This is my subjective interpretation of my world. I have left a mysteriousness, eeriness and ambiguity with these paintings so that you, the viewer, can make your own subjective interpretation of these paintings. Be open to it and don’t be afraid to just feel and not understand it all.”


Ondine Seabrook lives and works in Sydney. Seabrook graduated from the National Art School in 2017 with a BFA in painting and has been represented by China Heights Gallery since 2018.

Ondine’s paintings are exploration and celebration of the natural world. She paints places she has absorbed herself in and responds to them subjectively and emotively. Her vibrant use of colour is key to her portrayal of these places, along with her distinct use of striking gestural marks paired with soft, hazy marks. This results in a melding of boldness and subtlety that teleports the viewer into a serene atmospheric world.

Seabrook has exhibited in a multitude of group shows across Australia since 2013 and has had 7 Solo exhibitions. Ondine has been a finalist in the Brett Whiteley travelling art scholarship, the Portia Geach memorial award, The Mosman art prize and the Paddington art prize. Ondine has also had a solo exhibit with Louis Vuitton in Brisbane.

I wish I was special
by Jedda-Daisy Culley 

Awe is something not easy to define, but usually involves stopping in your tracks, being amazed by something, and, often, feeling small against the vastness of the universe. As I scroll through Ondine’s Instagram feed—palm trees, hibiscus flowers, bikini, boyfriend against the backdrop of a tropical paradise—. Meanwhile, I’m on the Eurostar: winter coat, grouchy kids, and my partner with a beard dotted in croissant crumbs. Outside, the landscape rushes past. Rain streaking the window in horizontal lines, turning everything into a soft, ghostly haze. It feels like one of Onnie’s landscapes, a window into a different way of seeing. What does it mean to be an avid awe hunter? How far do we need to extend our geography to adopt this mentality? Is awe hunting like any other addiction—do we need to turn up the volume once we've seen a thing or two? Are we, the snorkel dorks, still mind-blown by the sea dragon or even the sway of seagrass at Macca’s Bay? Have we seen those creatures from the deep too many times on Instagram? Are we numb to the sight, or riddled with fear? 

Trouble in Paradise, but what’s the "trouble in paradise" really? It all looks pretty perfect through my phone. Are these postcard-perfect moments from Onnie's life, both online and off, or do they present something deeper to unpack? My old man Steve, 72 years old, is a proper awe hunter in a homebound kind of way. His brain fires up with excitement at the grooves carved into driftwood by the river; he collects sculptural pieces crafted by ants to decorate the walls of his shed of curiosities. His love for the natural world is childlike, not too dissimilar to Onnie collecting shells to decorate her paintings. It’s so unpretentious, so her—she’s walking back and forth at Yarra Bay, bobbing up and down as she spies a good one. Her bag jingles with the sound of clinking shells.

I’m still on the Eurostar, Creep from Pablo Honey in my headphones, cruising my way into London. This is my nostalgia: 90% Freo, Mills Records, standing at the CD booth dressed like Courtney Love—a cliche. But this isn’t Onnie’s experience. Her nostalgia is an island where the forest meets the sea. Her childhood— a decade younger than mine, a 2000s girly—was spent traveling to Steiner school by boat, listening to... something very different, with a little pet rat on her shoulder. We lock into our nostalgia, those childhood experiences that, for better or worse, shape how we think the world should be seen and how we think life should be lived. Nostalgia isn’t just a longing for the past; it’s a lens through which we interpret the present, and for Onnie, her nostalgic connection to the island, the sea, and the forest drives her deep engagement with nature.

Anyone who’s spent time with Onnie knows she’s a conduit—her buzzy little fairy body shivering with the energy of whatever place, object, or person she’s tuned into. It’s like her skin can’t help but register the pulse of the world around her. Her hands run over her arms, tracing the invisible current of goosebumps. She’s not just seeing things; she’s feeling them, translating the language of bat, wind, eel, into a physical vibration that leaves her intoxicated with awe. This new collection of paintings make me wonder: Are we really looking? Are we peeking under enough rocks? Have you zoomed in on this moth? It’s like fairy floss. And that baby ray, like a ravioli with a smiling fairy face stuffed inside—actually - it’s more like an angel in a bubble tea to me. And the crazy thing? This isn’t new. It’s always been there, for millennia, waiting to be noticed. But stingray babies are trending online right now—who knew? I certainly didn’t, but I’m all in now. But seriously—look at this flower. It’s right in the middle of this canvas. We’re walking down Bondi Road, and Onnie’s stopping constantly, sniffing a hot fig leaf, staring down the barrel of a frangipani, diving into its sex with a kind of reverence. She floats through the chaos of traffic, so absorbed, so in the moment, it’s like everything else falls away. Unfortunately, the internet doesn’t have a scratch-and-sniff option yet, but these paintings might just be as close as it gets to capturing a sense of tactile wonder.

The trouble in paradise isn’t paradise itself, but how we engage with it in the age of constant digital input. Onnie experiences the world through all her senses—a mix of what she has seen, smelt, and touched—alongside the moments she screenshots offline. For her, paradise isn’t something distant; it’s everywhere, a state of mind. But this raises the question: are we at risk of losing the ability to experience true awe by relying too much on what we see online? It’s not that Onnie doesn’t look online; she does, but she applies her deep, innate understanding of nature to those digital fragments. She doesn’t just collect images for the sake of it—she translates them, grounding them in the real, lived world around her. But for many of us, the constant stream of digital references from the internet can make us numb to the simple wonders we encounter every day. We can’t just pull our understanding of nature from a curated feed of online hoards. Hardly any of us had an  ocean girl, fairy, mermaid, bush turkey childhood—one spent intimately connected to the natural world. But spending a day awe hunting with Onnie is a way of adopting her perspective—one that’s tuned to the small, overlooked wonders around us. Sometimes she brings her cat, Cassius, on a lead—it’s super weird , but it makes everything feel more magical. Onnie’s not offering a grand solution to the chaos of modern life, but she’s giving us a chance to shift our focus. She shows us that awe isn’t something to scroll past or file away—it’s something to step into. Awe is everywhere, but we need to stop, look, and let it in.