Jasmine Mowbray

Says Jasmine Mowbray of this work, "'Lace Curtain' came about through observing patterns of thistles and weeds in my studio but it soon began to remind me of the soon-to-be rare phenomena of lace curtains I've noticed around Marrickville. The suspended patterns create a screen between inner and outer worlds, filtering warm light outwards at night, and I imagine during the day from the inside, projecting a pattern onto the inner world."

Mowbray's paintings are built through slow acts of layering, scraping, staining and removal; oil, acrylic, pumice, and mixed media absorb into or resist the surface, positive and negative space continually exchanging roles. Construction grids become supports for climbing weeds; reflections collapse sky and earth onto a single surface. Many forms surface through pareidolia — the mind's tendency to find images within ambiguity — arising not from a preconceived end, but from the process itself. Rather than referencing a particular place, the paintings construct landscapes assembled from experience, imagination and accumulated looking.