Seth Birchall
Seth Birchall’s paintings conjure meditative worlds that pulse with colour and life. His fictitious landscapes - composed from found photographs as well as sketches and memories of Australia and Bali - reflect a biophilic urge to connect with other life forms in nature. Drawing inspiration from a wealth of rich and unexpected sources as well as romantic notions of landscape throughout art history, Birchall offers a contemporary twist on the gestural brushwork, moody light, and colour play of Expressionism and Impressionism. His paintings entwine subtle nods to the atmospheric effects in works by Australian Tonalists such as Max Meldrum and Clarice Beckett, Romantic artist William Blake’s electrifying scenes of heaven and earth, 19th century French paintings, and Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the ‘floating world’. These varied references collide in compositions that seem to shape-shift before your eyes, drawing viewers into the depths of a complex interior universe. His works act as portals for looking both inward to psychological states and outward to the natural world.
Walking into Birchall’s studio at Artspace, Sydney, feels like crossing a threshold. Canvases sit propped, hanging along walls or piled in corners. Blue latex gloves speckle the floor among used palettes and artful mounds of paint tubes - some over 20 years old. The space throbs with energetic calm. Birchall’s latest suite of works have an effervescent texture and palette of dusty blue, lilac, green, brown, pink and orange that gives them a life force of their own. Birchall describes the “shimmery excitement” generated through the act of painting as well as the shifting planes of vision in his works, which mimic symmetry but skew perfection with free-flowing movement. “It comes back to not wanting to have a static painting, keeping energy open,” he says. This motion and looseness is also instrumental in Birchall’s process. He works on multiple pieces simultaneously, orbiting the space to daub one paint colour across each canvas, slowly building layer upon layer over many months. Birchall’s works absorb this dynamism - they conjure a vivacity that bounces off one another when you enter his studio.
Yet within this lies serenity. His painted realms invite moments of pause and self-reflection, coaxing one to examine the interior spaces and wanderings of the mind. “What I’m trying to tease out is hovering in that space between loud and still, between movement and stillness,” Birchall says. A series of velvety paint strokes often radiate rings of light from the centre of his treescapes, exuding tranquility and the sublime. Alongside trees, his works also feature suns, moons, orbs, flowers and horizon lines - motifs Birchall describes as “sites of inner reflection” within which the landscape is imagined as a space of healing and peace. These scenes form mirrored compositions, frequently traversing multiple canvases, which allude to the spiritual symbolism of the cross in Chistian iconography. Offering serenity, transformation and space to discover the self, the works themselves become altars to the environments they depict. But there is also a generosity and lighthearted playfulness in Birchall’s practice. His exuberant scenes connect with viewers and celebrate the joy of painting itself - both its process and its histories across time and place.
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“What I’m trying to tease out is hovering in that space between loud and still, between movement and stillness.”