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bio Born Helsinki, Finland. Based in Victoria, Australia. |
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artiststatement |
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With a painting process refined over nearly three decades, I build layer upon layer of translucent and semi‑translucent layers, with moments of solid depth through controlled surrender, allowing chance and precision to coexist as images emerge slowly. Building, dissolving, and rubbing back the surface until a final image appears, each gesture becomes a kind of trace — of breath, of time, of inner terrain. My work emerges from an intuitive process that unfolds directly on the canvas. Each painting develops through a slow, attentive dialogue between gesture, material, and the shifting terrain of perception. The images that surface are fluid and atmospheric, suggesting movement, light, or natural forces without settling into fixed forms. Viewers often describe entering a space that feels familiar yet ungraspable — a place where associations rise, dissolve, and reform. This openness is essential to the work. Rather than offering a defined narrative, the paintings invite a contemplative encounter, allowing each person to meet the work through their own internal landscape. Working with fast‑drying acrylic and water, I build layers that are repeatedly washed back, rubbed away, or re‑formed. Chance and precision coexist as the image gradually reveals itself. A single area may be returned to for days, guided by instinct rather than intention. The process is meticulous, immersive, and grounded in discovery. A restrained palette keeps the focus on movement, tone, and the subtle shifts that shape the work’s internal rhythm. The surfaces hold a quiet complexity — layered, dimensional, and alive with the traces of their making — drawing the viewer into a slower, deeper engagement. My work resists definition. It does not originate in language but in breath, rhythm, and the gradual emergence of form. Each painting becomes a record of time and presence — an experience to be felt rather than explained. Agneta Ekholm - 2026 |
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Excerpt from essay by Sasha Grishin AM, 2023
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'Agneta Ekholm's large canvases with their subtle, dissolving semi-transparent veils of colour, even on first encounter, are striking and unforgettable. They are deeply immersive paintings-refined, exquisite and restrained - works that operate on a non-verbal, contemplative level, more like painted music than a painted narrative.' |
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Excerpt from essay by Dr Christopher Heathcote, 2019
Melbourne based art historian and critic, author of A Quiet Revolution |
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"By some uncanny perceptual means the visual outcome stirs the viewer inwardly. If you give yourself up to them, the steady authority of her paintings can slowly overwhelm you. It's that perennial puzzle of genuine art, how something as directly physical as a canvas covered with paint reaches across the soul; how it has emotional content. You find yourself encountering this solitary transport, primed with mood and unspoken meaning. These paintings amount to serenity made visible, a quality few artists have accomplished. Very few, it's rare." |
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Excerpt from essay by Dr Christopher Heathcote, 2017
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"In critical terms Agneta Ekholm's disciplined abstractions might
be described as late contributions to the action painting ethos,
but with a high measure of control. Confidently working to
international standards, they build on the mid-twentieth century,
breakthroughs of Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, especially the
achievements of these two masters talented protégés Helen
Frankenthaler and Morris Louis. She uses those suggestions of
eloquently dripped and poured paint, as well as their veiled and
luminous colours, then Ekholm takes these qualities further,
making subtle compositions which throb with historical awareness
yet are also so uniquely her own. Rising above provincial matters,
the artist is unmistakably part of an international movement
within abstract painting today." |