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 fungi embroiled in everyday human activities. These protagonists are accompanied by various pet-like insect companions.Her work contains echoes of the Dutch 17th century artists, mainly because Ormseth hails from the Netherlands originally herself and he felt a kindred-ship with and inspiration from them. Her use of plant and fungi life as narrative characters comes from wanting to depict universal situations and feelings without them being buried under the visible outside factors of gender, race, age ect than human subjects would embody, while still being able to depict a variety of shapes and forms of her subjects as "everyday men".

"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