CONTEMPORARY ART STOCKROOM Agneta Ekholm

Serene, vast and immersive, Agneta Ekholm’s sensitively layered paintings evoke a myriad of emotional and cognitive responses. Her organic compositions suggest movement, the play of light, glass-like formations or the flow of water. The fluid ebb and flow of her paint intuitively renders graceful forms via a technique Ekholm has mastered over the years of her practice.

Childhood memories of snow and wintry ice does fuel Ekholm’s work, although mixed in with this are the sand dunes and surf waves near her current home, as well as the adjacent wetlands and river estuary she often roams. From these modest personal experiences, these moments of inward joy communing with the world as it pulses, the artist extracts her evocative visual forms. They carry the suggestion of ebbing liquids, melting snows, sliding sands, interiors of sea shells, that is, of everyday things in nature that unceasingly flow and change and move.

- Excerpt from essay by Dr Christopher Heathcote, 2019

Ekholm says of her practice, ''Working with fast-drying acrylic and water, I use a sponge to apply layer upon layer of shapes and gestures with solid pigment and transparent washes, while continually washing and rubbing sections away until the final complex image is built. I may work for days on a small isolated section of the painting. It is an obsessive and fastidious process and the work travels a complex journey of twists and turns before I have found the ‘solution’ which is that painting's final incarnation.''

In a way nature is always the starting point. It acts as a mirror on the soul; a reflex. In nature I find something that triggers a kind of personal state of mind.
Agneta Ekholm

Finnish-born, Victorian-based artist Agneta Ekholm has been a finalist in the Muswellbrook Art Prize (2020), Ravenswood Art Prize (2020, 2018), the Wilson Visual Art Award (2013), the Fleurieu Art Prize (2013), the Mount Eyre Art Prize (2012), the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award (2012) and the Redland Art Award (2012) as well as being a six time finalist in the Calleen Art Award (2010-2016). In 2017 Agneta won the Best Artist Award at Denfair. She has completed major commissions for the Novotel, Melbourne, the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Guangzhou, China, the Marriott Hotel, Beijing, and The Parisian Sands, Macau, China. Her works are held in major public and private collections nationally and internationally, including Ritz Carlton Yacht Collection, Artbank, the Embassy of Finland (Australia), Sony Music Corporation, Google (USA), JW Marriott Hotel, Miami, Florida, Marriott Dallas Market Center, USA and Rydges Hotel Group.

Congratulations to Agneta Ekholm for having just completed an impressive 6 metre-long commission for the Ritz Carlton Yacht Collection.

Painted in acrylic on fine canvas, this piece will now travel the world as the Ritz Carlton launch their latest offering of exclusive luxury accommodation and travel this year. it’s an incredible piece! It will be admired by many.