Bella Ormseth
Spellbound

September 12th - October 3rd

Opening night reception Friday, September 11th 6-9pm

Please contact us to get larger images , detail images, or a video walk around of a piece!

NW-based artist Bella Ormseth returns to the gallery with a full show of her meticulously rendered portraits of anthropomorphic mushrooms and creatures embroiled in everyday human activities. These protagonists are accompanied by various pet-like insect companions. Inspired by her Dutch roots, her work contains echoes of Dutch 17th century artists. Her use of plant, fungi, and sea life as narrative characters comes from wanting to depict universal situations and feelings without being limited by visible outside factors like gender, race, and age that human subjects would embody.

"To be spellbound is to lose sense of yourself as you are caught in the thrall of something or someone. You are transformed, not through critical thinking and logic, but by succumbing to a feeling. I often find myself in this state as I observe the wonder of nature. Spells can be cast by many things, such as power, fear, charisma, nostalgia, and hope. Spellbound is the theme uniting the paintings in this show.

I use traditional techniques in my oil paintings, starting with a monochromatic underpainting, followed by many layers of color, glazes, and scumbles. I like the intimacy of an interior and am inspired by 17thcentury Dutch genre paintings. For reference, I use my nature and travel photos, photos of simple models I make to capture how light hits an object, and occasional images from magazines.

The paintings in “Spellbound” are the result of immersion in the nature surrounding my home, a reaction to spells cast in the larger world, and a belief in beauty." - Bella Ormseth