Currawongs at the Billabong 2023

Vibrant original gouache painting on beautiful thick textured paper using earth tones of ochre and sandstone paired with and blue and blue grey accent hues. This work features many hours of intricate brush marks and patterning by hand (please view all the images for close ups of the painterly details).

About the work: Pattern in nature soothes and satisfies us because of its rhythmic quality and unique imperfections. Like a visual mantra, repetition for me creates a sense of order and a deep state of peace. So I am interested in the way we all seek out, create, and use pattern to express cultural identity and find our place in the world. This painting of a pair of Currawongs is a motif I revisit in slightly different incarnations from time to time, (usually when the Currawongs visit me in my garden), and is from a series of works titled 'Motif'. The works in this collection are an introspective view of the greater Australian landscape, of the incredible bird life surrounding my inner city home, and the patterns I find in the variety of native and exotic plant species that grow together in its streets and gardens - the tree barks, leaf veins, petals, and fruit, and in this case, water and surrounding rocks. Representing them in my work is a way of sharing my development of connectedness and identity in this place I love and now call home.

This work is sold unframed. If you would like to receive it professionally framed, please choose the framing option when you check out.

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Floriosa is the botanical painting practice of Australian artist Sally Browne.
I've been making art for as long as I can remember. What was meant to be a one-year trip from the UK to Sydney in 1994 somehow became a permanent move, and Australia has been home ever since.
Much of my work begins outdoors. I love wandering through suburban streets noticing flowering trees, plants spilling over fences, unexpected colour combinations and the small details that most of us walk straight past. I often come home with armfuls of flowers, seedpods and odd little cuttings that eventually find their way into my paintings.

Although my work begins with observation, it rarely stays there. A vase of flowers, a flowering gum or a bird perched in the garden might provide the starting point, but colour, memory and imagination soon take over. I'm less interested in painting a particular flower than in capturing the feeling of being surrounded by nature.

Before becoming a full-time artist in 2015, I worked in graphic design, surface pattern and printmaking, experiences that continue to influence my love of colour, rhythm and composition. I'm also inspired by the simplicity and spontaneity of Chinese and Japanese ink painting, though over the years my own work has evolved into a looser, more contemporary style.

Alongside Floriosa, I maintain a contemporary fine art practice under my own name, exhibiting regularly throughout Australia. Over the past decade I've been fortunate to place hundreds of original paintings into private collections both here and overseas. These days, if I'm not in the studio, there's a good chance I'm wandering around Sydney with secateurs in my bag, bringing home flowers, seedpods and whatever else catches my eye.