Isabella Sowerby

Isabella Sowerby is a mostly self taught oil painter and film photographer, who has also worked as a ceramics artist at Pilliga Pottery since 2019. Originally from Dunedin, New Zealand she has been an artist from as early as she can remember. Her emotive oil works explore the intersections of nature with the human experience, using portraiture to humanize and celebrate our place in the environment. Isabella's work touches on deeply personal yet universal themes such as motherhood and nostalgia, it functions as a visual representation that we are in constant flux, a transmutation through time and space.

I paint as an act of processing what is heavy into light, it is all about the process and the pleasure of it. Oils are the best conduit for this practice as they can be thinned into glazes and applied in many layers to produce luminous colours, of which can capture the emotions, nostalgia and dream-like quality of my vision.

I am greatly inspired by nature, the human form/emotions, motherhood, and our experience of time passing and how all of these intersect.