Ashby's Banksia

This textured Acrylic painting on canvas features an Ashby's Banksia on a green table and is from my recent series of works titled Intersect. (See below for further reading). It has been finished with a varnish and professionally framed in a timber box frame

INTERSECT
For as long as I can remember I’ve been interested in the relationship between art and design. When I commenced my formal studies back in 1991, they were thrown into the same basket but I feel like they are wildly different subjects.

Having studied and practiced both disciplines, my work sits somewhere between the two, and it’s not always a place I feel comfortable. I have an ongoing internal tussle about where my art belongs. Every now and then I have to down my usual tools and set up a traditional still life scene that I studiously render in oils to prove to myself that I’m a ‘Real Artist’.

The intersect series is something I have been working on for a couple of years now, it’s about letting go; an admission and acceptance of my design background and a conscious merging of both disciplines into a body of work.

Still life is my favourite genre, yet these flowers in vases are clearly not painted from life. They are informed by synthetic cubist ideals and early pop art, and are unconcerned with form or perspective. Pictorial flatness is a naturally occurring theme in my work after many years designing logos and icons for single colour output, and the restraints of a long print design career have unlocked a deep appreciation and respect for the pleasure of applying the paint itself.

The works in this series explore both painterly and linear techniques, and are characterised by a central line through the composition that serves as the water line, refraction and intersect between the background, vase and surface. This technique somewhat mimics the imaginary grid structure I would use to set type and images in a traditional page layout.

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Floriosa is the botanical painting practice of Australian artist Sally Browne.
I've been making art for as long as I can remember. What was meant to be a one-year trip from the UK to Sydney in 1994 somehow became a permanent move, and Australia has been home ever since.
Much of my work begins outdoors. I love wandering through suburban streets noticing flowering trees, plants spilling over fences, unexpected colour combinations and the small details that most of us walk straight past. I often come home with armfuls of flowers, seedpods and odd little cuttings that eventually find their way into my paintings.

Although my work begins with observation, it rarely stays there. A vase of flowers, a flowering gum or a bird perched in the garden might provide the starting point, but colour, memory and imagination soon take over. I'm less interested in painting a particular flower than in capturing the feeling of being surrounded by nature.

Before becoming a full-time artist in 2015, I worked in graphic design, surface pattern and printmaking, experiences that continue to influence my love of colour, rhythm and composition. I'm also inspired by the simplicity and spontaneity of Chinese and Japanese ink painting, though over the years my own work has evolved into a looser, more contemporary style.

Alongside Floriosa, I maintain a contemporary fine art practice under my own name, exhibiting regularly throughout Australia. Over the past decade I've been fortunate to place hundreds of original paintings into private collections both here and overseas. These days, if I'm not in the studio, there's a good chance I'm wandering around Sydney with secateurs in my bag, bringing home flowers, seedpods and whatever else catches my eye.