Emily Besser is an Australian artist living in London, UK, working from her studio in Wimbledon. Emily completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours in Painting and then studied law, working in Native Title and Environmental law. After 10 years she returned to her painting practice and has been exhibiting regularly since then, as well as running art and jewellery workshops. Before leaving for London Emily worked as an Artist-Educator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, facilitating interactions with contemporary art for people of all ages and abilities. Emily is raising her two boys, with her partner, a journalist.

ARTIST STATEMENT

“These paintings were completed after the first London lockdown ended in 2020. After a few months of intense home-life, where work and play were intensely forged together, I was lucky to secure a studio space in Wimbledon to work in. With the kids back at school, I painted frenetically for the following few months, processing the intense experiences, fragmentation and uncertainty of that period. On constant repeat was Michael Kiwanuka’s self-titled album and some beautiful Dylan and Sprinsteen-sounding albums by The War on Drugs. I was thrilled to have my alone-time again, and I felt joyous and grateful. There was dancing, and I painted and painted, enjoying the layering and erasure I couldn’t achieve with my coloured pencils at home in lockdown. I finished each painting only when I could ‘see’ a feeling.

For me, painting isn’t a statement but it can be poetry, with its very own language, a secret way of speaking in colour and shape about the things of life: sex, death, flowers, day, night, joy and pain. I don’t know how else, other than through painting, to come at all the strangeness, suffering and beauty in the world. Abstract painting can be notoriously inaccessible and difficult for an audience to ‘read’, but being a painter is a blissful experience, much of the time. I hope some of that rubs off on the viewer”.

‘One feeling at a time’ is a calming mantra, something I say to myself and my sons when too many feelings come at once. As I write this, I’m back in the ‘forge’, our third lockdown. It’s different this time around, we are weary of the isolation, it’s colder and there is much less light. We’re in the thick of it, counting the days, one at a time, even counting the parts of the day. But I am so happy that my paintings are able to be exhibited in Sydney. I can still feel the warmth and energy I felt when I painted them and the memories and feelings in me that nourished them into existence. I hope you enjoy them and that you too can find your own feelings, one at a time, in these works.”

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Emerging Canberra-based artist Bethany Saab started painting only recently, during the first COVID-19 lockdown in early 2020.

Bethany has no formal training in painting and having been painting for less than a year, her style is swiftly evolving. Bethany was exposed to art early, watching her late mother, Anne, paint landscapes in oils in her home studio in central Australia. Anne’s brushes and palette knives form part of Bethany’s tools for work. Originally training as a psychologist, Bethany has worked in mental health for over a decade as well as having a few years as a self-taught floral designer as one half of Wagga Wagga-based micro flower farm and studio florist Little Triffids Flowers.

Bethany’s style is tight, detailed and hard-edged and despite the frequent inclusion of high-contrast elements or punchy colour palettes, the work is harmonious with a sense of calm. Predominantly still life, Bethany’s paintings have a strong sense of time and place.

“This collection was made during a brief period of 10 weeks and are the product of intensive engagement in the act of producing. These works depict inviting scenes of domestic life and capture snapshots in time with playful light, shadow and perspective. Collected, common or personal objects are rendered life-size to invite the viewer into the moment, with cultural and brand references lending a sense of familiarity and nostalgia. Patterned and graphic elements are presented alongside areas of space and room to rest. These works speak to the slowing down and nesting in of recent times, domestication, and to the directness of objects and shadows”.

VIEW FULL CATALOGUE HERE.