If you feel like you haven’t done anything today, don’t read further. Because the news that the co-founder of Dinosaur Designs is now launching her first solo exhibition of large-scale abstract paintings – and that they’re REALLY good – will make you feel even more like you did nothing today.

Pollination is the culmination of three decades of Louise’s artistic practice. She and her partner (and Dinosaur Designs co-founder) Stephen Ormandy met at art school, where they launched Dinosaur Designs in 1985. In recent years, they have been exhibiting their multidisciplinary artwork together at GOMA, Newcastle Art Gallery and a number of regional galleries. Louise has refined her own art to drawing and painting and is now showing those three decades of private practice to the public.

Much like her iconic resin homewares, Louise’s paintings focus on colour and depth. The oil on linen gives the work a delicate translucency, much like the layers she sees in the folds of nature. ‘Pollination reminds me of the infinite possibilities in nature: seeds sprout, spores spread, plants grow and forests come into existence and continue to develop,’ she muses.

By experimenting with liquid canvases and expanding pigment, Louise hopes her new work carries the incandescence she sees in nature. The swelling, synaesthetic shapes of contrasting colour on her canvas look suspended in time and movement, existing on a material plan completely and utterly their own.

‘I’m interested in these sorts of chance elements, where you’re opening yourself up to and allowing things to happen.’

Pollination by Louise Olsen
Thursday March 4th – Saturday March 28th
Olsen Gallery
63 Jersey Road
Woollahra, NSW