Artist's Statement

Katrina O’Brien is an intuitive painter based in the Illawarra, south of Sydney. A quiet observer of human nature and absorber of sensory experiences, Katrina is drawn to the unseen. Her works cross the realms of abstraction and expressionism, with gestural and intuitive mark making that is heavily influenced by music.

Through this process, O’Brien allows paint and graphite to flow into an ecosystem of marks that often expand off the page and travel into other works, morphing the visible with the unseen into a sensory experience that often feels musical and lyrical. The works are both expressive and considered, reflecting the urgency of the mark making with the psychological elements that push and pull in the work.

“Painting gives voice to the sensory experiences and perceptions I have, allowing me to translate them into a visual for others to experience. The way wind moves across a field, a flurry of leaves, movement of people, the tracking of a thought, of rain, the twinkling of a light, a reflection in water, how music shifts and turns, the movement of the ocean, the ebb and flow of conversation. It all has this poetry and psychology to it that I find endlessly fascinating.”

“A sound can present itself as a rich landscape that I feel my way through. The sound becomes a story, the story becomes a painting, the painting becomes a sound. Drawing for me is a dance with the paper.”

Primarily working with ink on paper, O’Brien says, “Paper is central not only to my art practice, but my life since childhood. Paper goes beyond painting for me. It’s always held this incredible sense of possibility with the power to write, read, paint, draw and to escape into a world of words and images. The paper itself is a rich sensory experience; the sound, the smell, the feel. It’s a seductive surface that gives life to my visual language in a way that no other surface can.”