Kirsty Budge
'Ok, so is this a fresh hell or are we just adding to the regular one today?'
2021
oil on canvas
166 x 200 cm
Courtesy the artist and Daine Singer, Melbourne
Artist statement
'Ok, so is this a fresh hell or are we just adding to the regular one today? is part of an ongoing exploration into my personal psyche, the collective unconscious, and to the co-existence of multiple realities. This work holds lots of little landscapes, symbols, mysteries, and synchronistic connections that made themselves proudly apparent during its making.’
Quote
Painted during the 2021 Melbourne lockdowns, Budge says the work reflects her personal experiences during this difficult period. 'This painting has its own logic and it was a way to cope, to practice acceptance and to surrender what was happening around me. It also felt like a form of communication because I have found it really hard to talk during this time. We were all in this inky abyss and trying to stay afloat. My closest people know that if I'm painting then I'm doing ok,’ she says.
Biography
Kirsty Budge is a New Zealand-born, Melbourne based artist whose paintings combine deep introspection and an interest in psychoanalysis with a broader view that embraces the richness of the world. They are a complex and ambiguous mix of figuration, abstraction, personal narrative and landscape. Budge has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) from the Victorian College of the Arts, where she was recipient of the 2014 Stirling Collective Award for Painting. Her work has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions including at Daine Singer and the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne. Budge has undertaken residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, as recipient of an Art Gallery of New South Wales Studio Scholarship and at the Caselberg Trust on the Otago Peninsula, New Zealand. Her work is held in the collections of Artbank and the City of Port Philip.
This is the third time Budge has been a finalist of the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize at Bendigo Art Gallery. More about Kirsty’s practice here.