Phoebe Allwell, born in Sydney, is an emerging artist in her final 3rd year, studying Visual Arts at Byron School of Art, Mullumbimby, NSW. She lives and works on Bundjalung country in Northern New South Wales, Australia.

Her art practice is an experimental and intuitive process-led inquiry, where painting is shaped by embodied stories, memories and feelings implicitly influenced by her former professional life as a somatic  psychotherapist, exploring themes of relationality, connection and healing through layering and reworking of paintings where colour and layered washes invite the viewer to dwell, and to contemplate.

This body of work titled “Threshold” provides an immersive experience of spaciousness, stillness and simplicity, inspired by Asian philosophies that seek balance through living in harmony with nature. Or equally influenced by the phenomenological philosopher Martin Buber and the “in – between” a space hidden from objectivised thinking, allowing for a deeper tapping into meaningful and authentic encounters.  The aesthetics transcend a slowing down of time. 

The paintings are immersed in sombre colour fields and enigmatic depths that invite relationalism – an interconnectedness where the artwork becomes a site of exchange, drawing the viewer into a dialogue of perception and feeling.  Inviting a breath out and a deep inward pause, inviting a slowing of time allowing for the viewers’ eyes and brain to biologically adjust to the dark nuanced pallet, as the paintings slowly reveal their hidden secrets.

The works remain abstract, minimal, and resistant to classification. Only to be viewed as a repetitive meditative narrative.  The composition of acrylic washes and raw pigments creates an alchemy of energy fields on the canvas, and textural mark-making echoes the explorative nature, fluid paint spills down the sides of the canvases, active drips juxtapose the natural raw linen, leaving traces of process.