Sally Bourke is an Australian contemporary painter. She works across multiple mediums and is constantly experimenting with them to create new ways of telling her stories.
“I don’t know if I was born an artist but I certainly was made into one. My earliest memory of making art was sitting on the veranda at my parents’ house with a box of those cheap, round watercolours that make ghostly marks on paper.
I did a painting of a pot of flowers that my mother had grown. I remember her walking past and then doing a double take, she turned and said to me, ‘That’s actually good’. It was the first time I’d really heard those words. I buried that little seed in my chest and I guess it grew later.
The faces and scenes I portray in my work are attempts to make reconciliations with my past, live in the present and imagine the future. I paint people from the inside out. At any given moment I am working on around ten to twenty paintings at a time in the studio.
At this point, art really isn’t a choice for me anymore. I think when you are first out of art school there’s always a backup plan if things fail. I’ve been down the rabbit hole a little too long now, so I suppose I don’t really know how to do anything else. I find comfort in making art because it’s the only place I don’t have to compromise.”
Images courtesy of Sally Bourke
Discover: sallybourke.com
