Art Mediums: oil on wood panel

www.bellaormseth.com

I was born in The Hague, Netherlands, and immigrated to the USA as a young girl. I received a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1990. I am represented locally at Roq la Rue gallery in Seattle and have shown at Copro Gallery in LA, Beinart Gallery in Melbourne, Australia, and Vashon Center for the Arts, on Vashon Island, WA. I paint in oils and my style has been described as magic-realistic and surrealistic.In addition to watercolor, I use various types of paper stock and printed ephemera including old boxes, books and magazine clippings, security envelopes, and product packaging—stuff that we bring into our homes and discard every single day. I use thrifted office and art supplies, drafting instruments and pre-computer graphic arts tools, stickers and labels, and a toner printer/scanner to explore various hands-on processes that were used before computers. My work is inspired by experimental art movements and styles that broke standard rules, a fusion of Dada and Surrealism with a dash of Cubism and Bauhaus.

“I am inspired by the local flora, fauna, and fungi of the Pacific Northwest, as well as by human emotions. I create a narrative setting in which the emotion unfolds, using mushrooms in the place of humans. The paintings depict ordinary mushrooms, plants, and animals I find around my home. They are not exotic creatures, yet they are also at peril, due to climate change and deforestation. I feature these smaller, commonplace beings to show that they too have worth and beauty. A theme of compassion runs throughout the work.”

“Each person who sees my work brings their own interpretation to it. Although my ideas are clear in my mind and serve as a guide in the development of my painting, I do not want a blatant portrayal of the painting’s meaning. I want my paintings to have some mystery to them, to be open to interpretation, and to allow the viewer to bring their own experiences into their understanding of my painting.”

“I am Dutch, so I feel that I have an inescapable weight of art history. I decided to meet this head-on in my work by using Dutch 17th century genre paintings as my guide in teaching me about technique, composition, color, and light. Dutch genre paintings, with their depiction of everyday scenes of ordinary life, marked a significant turning point in Western art, away from biblical and historical subjects. It stirs me to see this elevating of domestic life to a subject of art—of seeing not only beauty but something profound in the everyday business of life.”