In the Yarra Valley, east of Melbourne, Australia, artist Clair Bremner lives surrounded by what she calls a “natural tangle of vegetation.” In her dazzling paintings, she portrays the lush and labyrinthine landscape in a way both whimsical and reminiscent of reality, conveying the shape-shifting, shade-changing textures of the natural world.
Bremner wields her brush with both loose intuition and delicate intention. She renders bushy billows of treetops in thick, knobbly strokes, but intricately flecked with the tiny blades of leaves or layered with wispy fronds. These precise patterns meet languid drips and erratic splashes that melt down each canvas where trunks or stems might otherwise be found. Her color palette, meanwhile, varies from one piece to the next, seeming to capture the moods of different hours and seasons despite the often surreal and even technicolor tones. She explains, “I generally work with analogous colours combinations because I feel they best reflect the natural harmony of nature, the subtle warm or cool changes of the seasons and foliage provide endless inspiration. However, I am not afraid of colour and I often experiment with combinations that are not usually traditionally associated with nature and landscapes.”
Her overall experimental and contrast-embracing approach produces a diverse collection that is at once soothing and electrifying, earthly and ethereal, messy and meticulous—as spectacularly complex and ever-changing as nature itself.
Clair Bremner: Website | Instagram | Facebook
via [this isn’t happiness]
All images via Clair Bremner.