Amber Simpson
“To Dwell is to linger. To stay awhile and lose oneself in this moment’“
Stillness surrounds and makes itself familiar to every corner. Lightness and dark find their way to the surface and force themselves to be looked at. Nothing is overlooked. Every aspect, every crevice, every stone is overturned and inspected. Shadow becomes line and form. Colour – a pure and luminous entity that transcends the surface. Detail and lack thereof both demand to be the champion – a duality that plays across the pieces, this body of work and existence.
Amber uses the interior as a metaphor for internal thought and dialogue. A poignant and highly relevant subject in the times we find ourselves in. Dwell is an extended period in time where we go in and out of lockdowns. This abnormal disjunction ruptures our routine and almost forces us to look at our lives. The intensity of “trappedness” conjures up fears and possibilities, yearnings and a desire to rediscover ourselves. Our dwelling is both a place of security and protection as well as a restriction of our freedom to travel and to be somewhere else and someone else.
BIOGRAPHY
Amber is a Brisbane based contemporary artist. Her work is a hybrid of two of the most enduring and exquisite art forms – Timber Marquetry and Oil Painting. Eternally fascinated by the contrasts that occur within art, ideology and behaviour she endeavours to capture this within her process by having two distinct stages to her work. A heavy edit sees the artist scrutinize and rework the marquetry stage to create a modern shape, tone and compositionally focused base. The detail orientation, which she later overlays in oil paint, becomes heavily laden with symbolic elements rendered in a way that is closer to realism. At this stage Amber is able to harmonise the work by painting across the marquetry shapes and softens it with linear details and translucent elements. By entertaining the modern and the real, minimal and maximal she explores the complex dualities of existence. Ultimately Amber is driven to create work that could exist within the different time periods of art, borrowing a little something here and a little something there.
Born in Bowral NSW to a wood worker, the memories of her father’s workshop transcend time. She has always shared the same love of the textural and tactile beauty of timber and the same spicy, musty scent reminiscent of her fathers workshop lingers within her own studio space – fused with linseed oil and varnish. Amber originally trained as a painter at the North Adelaide School of Art and spent many years after in design and interiors. She is an inspired traveller whose collected adventures and conversations from around the world bring meaning to her life and art. Her work pays equal homage to art and design and can be found in collections throughout Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.
