Artist Statement
In essence, Imogen Welch's paintings are about creating an emotive response in the viewer. Working from an extensive archive of studio and crowd photography, Welch tightly crops and reproduces figures using energetic but deliberate strokes of saturated colour. She uses colour and cropping as a way to separate borrowed imagery from their sources, allowing the painting to become all its own. The isolation of small sections of an image, readable as figures but removed from their larger context, results in a very particular form of attention.
The immediate emotional resonance of vibrant colour is an important aspect of her work. Playing off the static photograph, Welch animates the picture using a reduced palette focused in reds and yellows that vibrate next to each other on the board. She makes you aware of materiality through loose and translucent brush marks that keep the painting infused with energy.
Value reduction and a deliberately unfinished quality reward closer inspection and ask the viewer to finish the scene as a participant. This participatory component is another strategy Welch employs to bring the viewer closer to an emotional engagement with the work. Her purposeful cropping suggests further information exists beyond the borders of the paintings but places the role of the storyteller onto the viewer.
Artist Bio
Imogen Welch was born in the Sydney suburb of Hornsby (GuriNgai and Darug land) in 1996. She has continued to live and work around Sydney as an artist and illustrator. She attained her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The National Art School in 2022.
Welch’s work has been included in group exhibitions at the National Art School, including at the Rayner Hoff Project Space for the Margaret Olley Drawing Week Exhibition (2021), the Stairwell Gallery for Library Inserts (2022) and The Grad Show (2022). In 2023 she exhibited at Goodspace Gallery as part of a group show. Her art is held in various private collections in Australia.
Over 4 weeks in October of 2023, Imogen took part in an artist’s retreat in the Southwest of France in the commune of Lesperon with 8 other emerging artists. An exhibition is planned for the 21st March to showcase each of their responses to the landscape.
In collaboration with Louis Royle (@goodthankslou), Welch’s illustration work spans across various food, beer, wine, DJ, music, and clothing vendors; appearing across socials, programs, and merchandise. Their work for DRNKS has appeared in RUSSH Magazine (100th edition, 2022). They were commissioned for a children’s mural (2022) at The Richmond Hotel.
