< PreviousLUCY O’DOHERTY English philosopher Alain de Botton once mused about the domesticity of life. “It’s not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves,” he said. Contemporary painter and drawer Lucy O’Doherty evokes the everyday qualities of habitual settings and fi lters them through a soft, lucid haze. Take the setting of Th e First Room. Plush banquette arrangements, an amber glow, and an abandoned Hellenistic sculpture. Inspired by the similarity between a restaurant with “provided food and muffl ed sounds” to the experience of being in the womb, the piece morphs into something more evocative than a graphic, empty dining hall. Th is evolution is intrinsic to her creative process. Self-admittedly, the dreamlike quality of the space is a result of O’Doherty recalling this scene from memory. Beginning with recollections from places she’s been to in the waking world and in her dreams, the artist says she “starts at a particular location and with an initial black line sketch devoid of colour”. “After some time has passed, I revisit the initial sketch and then choose a palette based on how I remember it making me feel.” Th e tones are self-explanatory in this instance but the composition is more ruminative than it seems. The First Room, 2023, Soft pastel and coloured pencils on paper, Lucy O’Doherty. Courtesy of China Heights ANDREW TAYLOR Bursts of vibrant streaks explode across Andrew Taylor’s linen surface like fi reworks on a balmy summer evening. Th ese transient eruptions are liquid light, interrupting celestial domains with fl ashes of fl eeting radiance. In this work, faithfully titled Outside: September Holidays I 9:11, these optical patterns fi nd a place independent of the sky. In Taylor’s mind, an imperceptible, transient moment may bear no signifi cance to the everyday individual – but like those who look through a kaleidoscope, artists fi nd beauty in cursory glances and rare moments that exist for only a second. Th is progression from mundane to art is what Taylor encapsulates in each of his pieces. “Each picture gives the painter the chance to make a journey,” he says. “Here, I wanted a pulse, an energy, a rapture that I felt long ago.” Th is notion of a crossing continues through Taylor’s palette; hacienda magentas, burnt yellows and cerulean blues in the shapes of erupting fronds. “Colour, for me, is at the beginning and there as it ends. It provokes, guides, inspires.” Outside: September Holidays I 9:11, 2023, Oil on linen, Andrew Taylor. Courtesy of Olsen Gallery 58GRAZIAMA GAZINE. COM GME_011_54to67_ArtFeature_13381442.indd 5801/10/2024 21:18GRAZIAMA GAZINE. COM59 GME_011_54to67_ArtFeature_13381442.indd 5901/10/2024 21:18NICK HEARD “I remember feeling like I had cheated in making this painting, because there was no struggle,” says New Zealand-born artist Nick Heard of Paper Fields. Working with a thick application of paint technically referred to as impasto, this piece from the artist’s Dear Georgie, I’ve Been Painting series reframes a botanical still-life image into an enchanting and technicolour reverie. Each stroke of Heard’s palette knife reveals and conceals an underlying hue. Across a matter of days, Heard paints a single bouquet, capturing how its fl owers bloom and wilt over time. In this case, an Australian native arrangement sat on a stool in his Sydney studio with a corrugated iron background refl ecting lines of light. “In the moment, I grabbed the unopened green tube off the studio fl oor and emptied it directly onto the canvas,” he remembers. “It all happened very quickly and luckily, it fell into place.” A moment of discord resulted in a resonance of tones and texture – an apt outcome for the artist who sees ‘music’ in this method. Paper Fields, 2022, Oil on canvas, Nick Heard. Courtesy of Jerico Contemporary 60GRAZIAMA GAZINE. COM GME_011_54to67_ArtFeature_13381442.indd 6001/10/2024 21:18SALLY SCALES “My inspiration is always my homeland,” says proud Pitjantjatjara (Aboriginal people of the Central Australian desert) woman, leader and artist Sally Scales. Hailing from the far west lands in remote South Australia, Scales’ connection to Th e Dreaming – ‘Tjukurpa’ in her native, near-extinct language – is the tether that binds her entire body of work. Typically working on large-scale linen canvases, 337-23AS is a rather restrained acrylic work that tells the story of her country, identity and ancestors. “When I paint on canvas I can throw the paint and create many layers. On paper, I have to be very deliberate. I’m limited down to only fi ve,” Scales shares. “Colour always informs my approach, but in a diff erent way. [Here], it’s more about the absence of it.” Th e watercolour strokes intersecting with black and red circles are an ode to the artistic styles of her two grandmothers, Kuntjiriya Mick and Kunmanara (Wawiriya) Burton. Th e elements of the creative outputs of both her elders are a throughline which tell a story of neverending stewardship to lands and waters. 337-23AS, 2023, Acrylic on paper, Sally Scales. Courtesy of N.Smith Gallery GRAZIAMA GAZINE. COM61 GME_011_54to67_ArtFeature_13381442.indd 6101/10/2024 21:18BEATRIZ MILHAZES Th e pulsating spirit of Beatriz Milhazes’ native Rio De Janeiro resonates in each layer of her spatial collages; the lines recall Brazilian modernist styles and the rugged coastline of Copacabana and Ipanema. Indeed, Milhazes’ play on composition is always inspired by her environment. “Colour combinations are the essence of my work… from a more melancholic feeling during the ’90s to the strong contrasts when it meets optical and hard geometry,” she says of the evolution of her craft. In Dália Purpura (Purple Dalia) Milhazes heralds the “diff erent moments of developing an image using screenprint technique”. She suggests that her work be viewed from the bottom up to really gauge the vertical evolution of it. With magical pinks, yellows and lilacs, this construction is an underwater landscape, but is also, according to Milhazes, a “chromatic joy that is also about a conceptual system, rigour and poetry.” “Colour is a natural force. An infi nite one, it is about life,” she says. Dália Purpura, 2015, Woodblock and screenprint, Hiromi handmade DHM-11 triple thick, Beatriz Milhazes. Courtesy of White Cube MARGAUX OGDEN Painting tessellating patterns in saturated secondary colours is viewed as a feminist choice by Brooklyn-based artist Margaux Ogden. “It’s a way of pushing back against the historical male seriousness of abstraction,” is how she describes it. “Bright colours are often associated with the unserious or the feminine and using them is one way for me to embrace those interpretations,” she says. Th is piece began with the artist sitting by ancient ruin, Bath of Caracalla, on the outskirts of central Rome, and drawing it. Th e sketch was used as loose scaff olding to explore endless possibilities of form, colour, and surface. Th rough the artist’s choice of paint colours – selected ever so intuitively – her modus operandi was realised. “Th e patterned repetition of colour speaks directly to my work, especially how the image evolves when it spins,” she says. “Th ere’s an eerie beauty to it. It feels very much refl ective of nature.” Bathers (Magenta, Permanent Green, Pyrrole Red Light & Vat Orange), 2023, Acrylic on canvas, Margaux Ogden. Courtesy of White Cube 62GRAZIAMA GAZINE. COM GME_011_54to67_ArtFeature_13381442.indd 6201/10/2024 21:18GRAZIAMA GAZINE. COM63 GME_011_54to67_ArtFeature_13381442.indd 6301/10/2024 21:18BEC SMITH Th e act of disassembling and rebuilding is innate to Bec Smith’s puzzle-like works. Often created separately – albeit staged and presented in tandem – Smith’s pieces are singular slices of a bigger creative cosmos. Every curve and bend marries to form a ‘choose your own adventure’ jigsaw. Th is decision is informed by her view of a kaleidoscope as “tiny alternate worlds”. “Miniature rooms with dancing light refl ections of intricate colour and shape reveal slices of abstracted realities,” she says. Th is viewpoint specifi cally fuelled her creative process for these dual Series Circuit pieces. “I challenged myself to create pieces that extended beyond the limitations of the borders, and worked in an almost tiled approach with repetitive forms,” she shared. “My aim was to push and pull the forms from the foreground into the background and vice versa, omitting shapes and joining others using colour and contrast.” Smith says her choice of hues, a process that involves taking a long time mixing colours, is the driving force to communicate what the arrangements are. “I alter the mix of colours according to how I’m feeling in the moment. Surprise over planning is tinged with joy.” Series Circuit III & IV, 2023, Acrylic and mixed media on board, Bec Smith. Courtesy of Saint Cloche 64GRAZIAMA GAZINE. COM GME_011_54to67_ArtFeature_13381442.indd 6401/10/2024 21:18JANET WERNER Canadian artist Janet Werner has painted large-scale fi ctional portraits of duality and polarity since 1997. Th is 27-year dedication to unconventional composites is due in part to a fascination with realism and photography but also a study of contrasts and antithetical pairs. In Virgo, Werner says her inspiration formed from “juxtaposing opposites”. Th e push and pull between warm and cool tones, and movement and stagnation, forms a sort of multi-bodied Hydra – a mythical creature in the midst of a dance. “My sources were two images from fashion magazines,” Werner says. “In the bottom, the recession of feet creates a visual rhythm, along with transparent fi lms of warm colours that hide and reveal the two fi gures. In the top half, there is a stable, monumental, solid blue form, like a curtain coming down on a stage. Here I turned the image upside down, so the whole painting is actually reversible. In the fi nal painting, the two parts form a kind of weird creature, both moving and still.” Virgo, 2022, Oil on canvas, Janet Werner. Courtesy of Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York GRAZIAMA GAZINE. COM65 GME_011_54to67_ArtFeature_13381442.indd 6501/10/2024 21:1866GRAZIAMA GAZINE. COM GME_011_54to67_ArtFeature_13381442.indd 6601/10/2024 21:18SAMANTHA THOMAS Th e fundamentals of art – shadows, structures and shapes – are the primary paradigm in which Samantha Th omas views her work. Utilising everyday studio items such as raw canvas, thread and acrylic paint, the Texas-born, California-based artist parlays mundane materials into something that defi es convention. Lines are a common thread in Th omas’ pieces, but the fl ickering forms appearing in Incendiaria are much more personal than the vibe the inorganic holes and ombré background initially give off . Referencing the act of map-making (cartography), Th omas revisited the process of stitching burnt linen into a canvas painted with acrylic paint after watching her Malibu house be ravished by the 2018 Woolsey Fire. “Th is was the fi rst body of work I made post-fi re and my palette completely changed,” she says. “I began working with rich saturated hues and gradients of shifting colour. Th e burning of the linen also became more violent and gestural. Living in Southern California, we experience some of the most stunning sunsets and sunrises, which are a result of smoke from surrounding fi res. Th ese paintings echo the sentiment that beauty can be made from a source of destruction.” Incendiaria 2022, Acrylic, linen and thread on canvas, Samantha Thomas. Courtesy of Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York MUSONGA MBOGO By way of Singapore and, most recently, a residency in Napoli in Italy, Canberra-based visual artist Musonga Mbogo tells narratives that are rich in culture. Utilising contemporary tropes, Mbogo paints a character study of his Tanzanian and Zimbabwean roots and Australian upbringing. To him, a kaleidoscope is a passage to “new perspectives”, a theme prominent in this particular work. Titled Purity, a name inspired by the 2018 A$AP Rocky single featuring Frank Ocean, the piece embodies the notions of rebuilding after division, diaspora and discovering a sense of being. “Th e artwork focuses on the act of resetting yourself when things are falling apart and embracing the road towards fi nding new peace,” Mbogo says of the contemporary piece. Each section of the work can be seen as a segment that reveals the artist’s psyche and converges at diff erent angles to engage diff erent points of view. In a way, these vivid explorations could be viewed as a self-portrait broadcasting Mbogo’s aspirations, anxieties and journey towards amalgamating as a “third culture” kid. Purity 2023, Spray paint, acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, Musonga Mbogo. Courtesy of Hake House GRAZIAMA GAZINE. COM67 GME_011_54to67_ArtFeature_13381442.indd 6701/10/2024 21:18Next >