Abstract Expressionist Clyfford Still once said, “No painting stops with itself, is complete of itself. It is a continuation of previous paintings and is renewed in successive ones.” This is the approach Agneta Ekholm takes with her work. Each new painting is a response to the last, a confluence of the past and present. “I always look at my work as a continuous flow,” she says. “I see it as following on from previous works.”
This process is intuitive for Ekholm, who sees where inspiration takes her in layered, abstract canvases that engage with both the formal and technical elements of painting, alongside the organic nature of making marks on canvas. The Finland-born artist’s 25-year practice is a response to the world around her. Having moved from the city to the water in Ocean Grove, Victoria, during pandemic years, Ekholm has found the new setting conducive to creating: “I have become a better artist by being closer to nature and water.”
Such an influence is not necessarily explicit in the output to canvas though. Some paintings echo the vague suggestion of landscape, but much of her work is purely imaginative, something of a dreamscape. The environmental setting is mainly used to offer stillness, so Ekholm can create without distraction. “Silence takes time to learn, to understand and appreciate,” she says. “And it takes time to become silent yourself.”
Her large-scale abstract paintings showing at Flinders Lane Gallery are up for audience interpretation. “It always surprises me that each person sees something different in my work,” Ekholm says. But for her, they are another part of the creative process: “I see my work as a research project. I have a desire to reach into the unknown with each new painting.”
Confluence
Agneta Ekholm
Flinders Lane Gallery
26 September—14 October
This article was originally published in the September/October 2023 print edition of Art Guide Australia.
Suggested Reading
65,000 Years brings truth telling to art history
65,000 Years: A Short History of Australian Art is an extraordinary account of the unique art of this continent, published alongside a landmark exhibition at the Potter Museum of Art. Necessary and urgent, it tells the story of Indigenous Australian art; a new art history unlike anything we’ve seen. For Jane O’Sullivan, it’s a remarkable and must-read book.
Jane O'Sullivan
Oslo Davis reimagines art terms
In a new series of illustrated postcards available as a free gift with purchase only at the Art Guide Bookstore, Oslo Davis takes on classic and contemporary art terms and genres and reimagines what they could be referring to.
Oslo Davis
The major exhibitions open in each capital city this summer
With so much to choose from, we’ve rounded up the major summer exhibitions in each capital city, open all summer long. Spanning Yayoi Kusama, Magritte, the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, and many more.
Art Guide Australia
Poetic relations at the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art
Bringing together 70 artists from 30 countries, the 11th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art fosters connections across cultures and borders, and translates cultural knowledge for the present day.
Steve Dow
‘About Face’ mirrors the alluring world of contemporary portrait painting
About Face is a smart piece of marketing. The new book on portrait painting from Australia and New Zealand has a mission to change buyers’ minds about the field. But as Jane O’Sullivan discovers, any sales pitch wears thin if it’s repeated often enough, and the close attention to how portrait painting is received by the market means that other important conversations fade to the background.
Jane O'Sullivan
Speaking volumes: on our love affair with art books
The growing cultural interest in art books reflects the enduring power of the printed word. Jane O’Sullivan takes a closer look.