Life in the sawahs

This painting I started at the end of my trip in Bali. I used the left over paint (and is was quite a bit, which I didn’t want to waste on one of the nice pieces of Strathmore mixed media papers which I brought with me and which I already had primed three times.
So first I started with blind applying paint with poring straight out of the bottle and then have it dripping to all sides. Using a palette knife spreading more paint over the top and now with a brush tried to make sense of it. The figures again appearing somehow they always come. The farmers walking and working in the rice fields. Getting ready for harvest. The old huts they sit in for shade or make a little fire to cook some food. We know most of them now as we always walk the same beautiful track for an hour to Ubud. Although somewhat disturbed by the massive buildings foreigners dare to built in those gorgeous fields there are no regulations as to what, where and how high you can built. Pretty awful I must say. And I feel as I said before in my blogs very conscious about every step I make. Again the eco anxiety comes up. Trying to make a work without contemplating about these things is very difficult but I think this one will be just that. Color, texture and love for the landscape and people and as always when I am in Bali my guardian seems to appear everywhere I go and so of course in some of my paintings…
This painting has been professionally mounted on s thick edged artist panel and ready to hang. Signed at the back with a certificate of authenticity

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‘A work is born from a kind of confused emotion. The work is an attempt to elucidate that emotion.’ Puvis de Chavannes

‘An abstract language that reveals references to an aesthetic figuration with a surreal flavour. This is the art of Marijke Lambregtse, an Australian based contemporary artist of Dutch origin, who focuses her artistic research on the relationship between man and the world, in its most hidden aspects. Her paintings are often characterized by the presence of human-like figures, whose facial features vanish overwhelmed by fields of colour, annihilating gestural communication and leaving the latter in complete control of emotions.

An alternation of more gestural brushstrokes and more detailed and sharply described elements, give the work a pleasant dynamism. Looking at Marijke Lambregtse's paintings, we feel out of place, in awe, as if we have crossed the threshold into another world and we are suddenly strangers. (Francesca Brunello)

Her recent abstract figurative works arise from a growing eco-anxiety and a critical concern for the state of the world today. Shaped by direct encounters with climate change, pollution, displacement, and environmental injustice, the work responds to systems that prioritise profit, control, and exploitation over care and coexistence. She seeks to harmoniously merge message and aesthetics, using emotionally charged strikingly colorful, acrylic paint, recycled materials, text, and texture to confront viewers with both beauty and unease.

A professional dancer, teacher and choreographer before crossing over to studying visual art and gaining a BVA majoring in sculpture at Griffith University in Brisbane she was awarded the Karl and Gertrude Langer Award which resulted in a solo exhibition at the Brisbane Town Hall gallery.

Since then she has been exhibiting regularly with several solo exhibitions, being a finalist in numerous art awards and has been widely collected in Australia and overseas.

Brunswick Street Gallery Small Works Art Prize 2026
Lethbridge 2025 Small Scale Art Prize salon finalist
Finalist Abstraction Exhibition Petrie Terrace Gallery 2025/2024
Finalist in Lethbridge 2024/2023 Small Scale Art Awards Salon de Refusés
Finalist in the Brisbane Rotary Art Show 2024/2023
Finalist in the Brisbane Portrait Prize Salon des Refugees 2022
Finalist in the RQAS annual Exhibition 2023
Finalist in the Amore exhibition at Artprenr Gallery 2023
Finalist in the Queensland Figurative 2022
Finalist in the Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award in 2022, 21, 20 and 2019
Awarded the Power of Creativity Art Prize by Contemporary Curator Art Magazine in 2021
Highly Commended in the Abstraction Exhibition Royal Queensland Art Society 2021
Finalist in the Rotary Spectacular Brisbane in 2019 and 2018