Emerging artist Indivi Sutton recalls ‘vivid’ childhood memories of feeling paint between her fingers and playing with pencil shavings to create unpredictable blurs of colour.
Growing up in New York, she was immersed in the city’s creativity and influential art world. She took classes at museums, summer programs in theatre at Shakespeare & Company and often visited the iconic MET Costume Institute Exhibitions!
These days though, she’s a student studying Art History and French at The University of Sydney since moving here in 2016. ‘Living in Sydney and Australia is now where I feel my roots. It is where my family are from and a place that has always resonated within my being as a place to belong,’ she explains.
But these varying experiences and places have all helped inspire her contemporary painting style. Indivi layers natural pigment powders on raw linen to create soft blurs of colour, experimenting as she goes to find ‘unintended outcomes’.
‘Emotions and memories are the language of my paintings,’ she adds. ‘I am naturally curious, and I keep that as precious inspiration to be free and conjure the idea of something wherever it may lead.’
Nature is another primary focus in her works. Painting from her home studio, she looks out at views of the trees with her rabbit, Pops, at her side as she works. ‘
There is a large wall in this room where the canvases are stacked. I lean the canvases on milk crates to paint, so the wall becomes a reference and record of tones I have created,’ Indivi says.
This space is currently covered in a myriad of colourful brush marks after working on her solo show ‘ONE’, which opens at Saint Cloche‘s Sydney gallery today. The body of work touches on themes of consciousness, spirituality and the natural world around us as interpreted by Rudolf Steiner – who’s philosophies also formed the basis of Indivi’s early schooling years.
Each piece is conjured from a personal experience, capturing a moment time and place forever in the stillness of her ethereal paintings.
See ‘ONE’ at Saint Cloche until June 19.
