Behind The Haunting Paintings Of Melbourne Artist Ella Dunn

Ella Dunn’s figurative paintings are encouraged by private experiences. She derives narratives from people today, interactions, destinations and domestic scenes – there’s no telling where by or when she may well get a spark of inspiration. 

‘I am generally drawing,’ she points out. ‘That informs my paintings. My drawing notebooks occur with me in all places. I normally generate down times that I have experienced or that have caught my notice and have stayed with me in some way. As the drawings, sketches and words and phrases construct, I start off to get a unfastened, fragmented narrative that drives the operates.’ 

Most not too long ago, a moment between two children at kindergarten, where Ella (an Early Childhood Teacher in training) was on placement, set in movement the notion for her newest overall body of function on shadows.

‘I was pushing two kids on the swing when one reported “look down!”. Their shadows have been dancing up and again alongside the floor. The boy or girl claimed, “look, I’m touching my shadow, no it is touching me”, as they arrived at down to the ground,’ she points out. 

This moment drew Ella’s focus to the lots of ways in which shadows shift and morph, relying on how you watch them. 

‘Looking all around, I became knowledgeable of the different rhythms and approaches shadows shown them selves. I recognized my shadow pursuing me, remaining there as organization, so I commenced documenting my shadow on distinctive surfaces,’ she states. 

Her favourite piece in the new assortment, ‘I touch my shadow, no my shadow touches me’, is a nod to this minute of conception. 

Portray was not normally Ella’s decided on medium. The artist moved from the mid-North coastline in New South Wales to Melbourne in 2013 to study fine arts at VCA in drawing and printmaking. But, when a housemate’s buddy gave her an previous suitcase full of oil paints, she realised she had uncovered her content area. 

‘I believed I might as well give them a go,’ she suggests. ‘Since then I have loved the medium of paint and its unpredictability.’ 

She doesn’t have a consistent process she follows, rather she makes it possible for intuition to guide the procedure (which generally requires applying levels of paint, getting rid of it and portray about it once more).

‘Even if I begin out with an concept, I never ever know wherever I am heading to end up,’ she says. ‘And that is the beauty of paint.’