Winds of change and spirits (large painting)

Winds of change and spirits, a large painting by Marijke Lambregtse
This painting is done on a beautiful organic heavy quality canvas. It was quite a rough surface to paint on that’s why it took a long time to get where I wanted it to be. I just needed something really bright and happy to counter balance my feelings of worry about the environment. While starting this work I heard that in some areas in the world there’s much less wind and at first I thought that’s not that bad?However that there’s less wind is of an environmental concern and tells us about climate change. We need wind for so many things. Wind brings change and is an emissions-free source of energy. Also wind is moving air something we desperately need for just a little example: it spreads the sun’s heat throughout the atmosphere. Small plant seeds are carried to new places and so on. The wind can carry smells a long way. Animals can stay away from predators and catch prey with help from the wind. We people of course use it for many many things like sailing, flying kites, windmills etc etc. There are many spiritual meanings and symbolisms of wind, it can be a symbol of freedom, wind has the power to change things.
Again and again there’s always the issue of the environment and what we do to it what plays a big role when I start to paint. There is some eco grief about it. “Ecological grief - the mourning that takes place when we lose parts of the natural world - is likely to affect more of us in the future” (TheConversation.com).
So besides being a lovely colourful piece for your wall it’s also a very busy, full-of-life artwork, which I hope will make people sit down and wonder what this vibrant piece of art is all about and will become a starting point for conversation and discussions.

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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