We are proud to introduce Tasmanian artist Brooke Van Ruiswyk to Manyung Gallery.
Brooke is an emerging artist based in Launceston, Tasmania. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with Honours from The University of Tasmania.
She has been a finalist in the Glover Prize, the Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award, The Doyle's Art Award, and the Fifty Squared Art Prize.
Van Ruiswyk’s practice depicts her close connection to the Tasmanian landscape, where her family has lived and worked as farmers for many generations.
Her paintings are delicately executed using oil paint on canvas through layers and detail. A variety of brushes and palette knives are used to create rich textures and subtle gradients that seamlessly work together to capture a moody ambience.
The cooler seasons can feel prolonged and evoke feelings of isolation and loneliness. Van Ruiswyk embraces this experience as a way to truly see and appreciate her surroundings, believing that there is beauty and spiritual growth to be found in moments of solitude.
‘There is a deep connection to place, but also a sense of misplacement and humbling awareness of merely passing through. I am constantly trying to absorb and document my experience, taking photographs and capturing memories that I can then collage together in the studio. The resulting artworks are mostly fiction in nature; the psychological weight of the loneliness and isolation manifests itself as vast farmland under grey ominous skies.’
Brooke's paintings will be featured as a part of our upcoming Peninsula Panoramas exhibition at Manyung Gallery Flinders. Opening Saturday 2nd December, 2023.