Melinda Clyne

from Sydney College of the Arts in 2017 and was named “What drives my practice is the depiction of the compelling tension between the gestural brush mark – the ‘hand’ of the artist – and the impersonal straight line,” says Melinda. This juxtaposition was evident across the series of four works submitted by the artist and especially so in her prize-winning painting. Here, complex layering makes it impossible to discern the artist’s starting point, as rippling lines etched into the canvas are sliced with cool, hard-edged markings and molten layers of amber undulate and fizz from the margins. “These diametrically opposed paint marks entwine on the canvas, acting perhaps as a visual metaphor for the contradictory feelings that arise in life.”