Kate Bender is an emerging Australian artist and graduate of The School of Art, Australian National University (2014). Her paintings are created by the soft application of oil paint in multiple thin layers in a slow meditative process, colour and light are amplified to create works evocative of emotion and mood.
The rose symbolises powerful emotions and desires, with all its paradoxes and ambiguities – it can be healing yet harmful, passionate yet mournful, flourishing yet decaying. In her paintings of roses Kate captures the fragile ephemerality and diverse beauty of the rose, conveying both a sense of movement and joy as revealed by the curvaceous and billowing petals. These paintings of roses are an unashamed celebration of the feminine sensuality, the strength, and delicate beauty that a rose contains.
Colour has always generated visceral emotions in Kate, reactions she finds endlessly fascinating and something she tries to capture and pass on in her paintings. The colour palette of each painting sets the tone; sometimes it’s musical, sometimes it’s emotional, sometimes it’s a sensation or even a scent . Capturing the details of a rose is not essential to her, in fact she finds the details a distraction from the sensations and emotions that colour within a form arouses. The slow, meditative process of applying soft, delicate layers of paint allows the texture of the canvas adds to the soft materiality, and the transitions of colour describe the form without unnecessary detail.
Bender works from her studio in the garden of her home in Bungendore, New South Wales.