Turning over ~ Artist Statement

These new abstract works have been influenced by my new found obsession with flowers and plants. The shapes, textures, colours and sculptural arrangements have found their way into my ongoing exploration with repetition, order/disorder, surface manipulation and pattern formation. Since the opening of my own gallery in February 2015, I have with each new exhibition purchased a vase of flowers from the florist next door. Every 3 weeks, I look forward to being able to make my own flower arrangement. Like my art hero, Rosalie Gascoigne* did for most of her life before she became an artist, I spent this time thinking about the placement of colour and texture, shape and form until finally an overall sense of order is reached. This new sculptural process has no doubtfully infiltrated into my life and that of my art making. The accumulation of plants has reached my home and I have slowly gathered a garden of pots that provide me with an abundance of shapes amongst the foliage and the shadows and a slightly new palette of muted tones.

* Rosalie Gascoigne (1917 – 1999) was an Australian sculptor who practiced Ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, before she became recognised as an artist.

Ahn Wells
November 2016