Kerry Inkster

The world of women swimming underwater features strongly in my work. I’m a contemporary painter and underwater photographer from Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. My paintings explore the female figure and face through poetic symbolism, pai...

The world of women swimming underwater features strongly in my work. I’m a contemporary painter and underwater photographer from Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia. My paintings explore the female figure and face through poetic symbolism, paint itself, light, colour and personal journal, and have a distinctive, bright palette with saturated tones and contrasting light. I use Notan principles, a term derived from the Japanese language, literally means “light-dark balance”. I find it to be an excellent tool for simplifying composition of complex scenes and to see value instead of colour. This encourages my exploration of colour, employing Paul Gauguin’s synthetics style, where I aim to synthesise three features into my work: the outward appearance of natural forms; my feelings about my subject; and the purity of the aesthetic considerations of line, colour and form.