GUEST ARTIST - Seabastion Toast at Flinders Lane Art Gallery.
Based on the mid-North Coast of NSW, Seabastion Toast’s work explores the act of looking and the instability of perception. Working primarily in oil, Toast constructs rigorously composed images drawn from observation, where figure, object and ground are treated with equal structural weight. Classical compositional strategies inform the work, while remaining attentive to contemporary image culture. Light, pattern and degrees of abstraction operate as structural tools rather than mere decorative effects, directing attention and shaping perception.
Toast holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from Southern Cross University and has studied at the Pratt Institute, New York. She was recently the recipient of the 2024, $40,000 Percival Portraiture Prize, has been awarded the Darcy Doyle Landscape Award twice, as well as the People’s Choice Award at both the Portia Geach Memorial Award and twice at the Sunshine Coast Art Prize. She is regularly a finalist in many prominent awards including the Mosman, Glover and National Still Life awards. She
was recently a finalist on the Australian premier of Portrait Artist of the Year. Her work has been exhibited widely across Australia.
Artist Statement
I paint to test how perception shifts under light, time and proximity. My work begins with compositional propositions that are developed through observation, resulting in constructed images in which figure, object and ground are held in deliberate spatial tension. I am interested in how contemporary subjects occupy space, how they perform or withdraw, and how painting can resist the speed at which we usually consume images. Through sustained looking, I aim to create conditions in
which viewers become conscious of their own perception unfolding.
