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Clare Dubina has been creating art inspired by the female form ‘and the shapes she creates’ since 2001, when she completed her a Bachelor of Fine Arts back in Philadelphia. But for the past 20 years, she’s moved through various creative roles, doing everything but working as a full-time artist – until recently.
‘When I moved to Australia in 2011 and needed a job straight away, I applied to work as a stockroom assistant in a retail shop, purely based on my adoration of their visual merchandising,’ Clare says.
This job quickly paved the way into display coordinator role, where she created paintings and sculptures for the brand’s visual merchandising for almost 10 years.
Then came Covid. ‘I found myself revisiting my old uni sketch books and picking up where I left off from,’ she says. ‘I made the decision to back myself and follow my passion to carve out a career in art.’ Now a full-time artist, she’s found success collaborating with local brands like Viktoria & Woods and Tigmi Trading.
Despite all of the change, Clare’s paintings today still reflect women’s bodies in all their glory. From her Brunswick studio, Clare works with warm, earthy, and muted colours, intuitively layerings colours and adjusting the composition as her work evolves on the canvas.
Alongside art heroes like Edward Weston and Georgia O’Keeffe, Clare says she finds plenty of inspiration in textiles, pottery, and interior designers such as Kelly Wearstler, Arent&Pyke and Flack Studio.
‘I love experimenting and seeing how far I can push my subject matter and manipulate my materials – which most definitely stems from my printmaking background,’ she adds.
‘Even though my style of painting may change, I do always aim to have each series inspire the next so that the underlying narrative is there, no matter how subtle or extreme the shift may be.’ Until she finds the next iteration of her style, we’ll be appreciating the soft blend of colours and textures in Clare’s current dreamy paintings.
