Ondine Seybrook is young, ambitious and a very talented artist.

“It’s always best when you make the decisions in the moment and let the painting have a life of its own and don’t get too caught up with the initial preconception.”

Welcome to Mamamia’s art endeavour, the Voulez-Vous Project. Every week we celebrate emerging artists, designers, illustrators and creators. Our aim: to help the internet become a slightly more beautiful, captivating, or thought-provoking place by making art accessible. Click here to see all the previous Voulez-Vous posts.

Growing up on Scotland Island, in Pittwater and the Northern Beaches, Ondine Seybrook was surrounded by creativity.

She has always been naturally drawn to art, and she has never been without it, whether it be around her (her dad is an illustrator, and her mum comes from a very creative family), or through her practice, which she has never stopped doing.

“Both my schools were super supportive of the arts and I kept on doing a lot of it. Eventually I narrowed my interest down to painting and started to really work on and develop that. Since then, being at The National Art school I’ve further narrowed that down to landscape paintings done with oil paints. Growing up on the Northern Beaches definitely had an influence on that,” she explains.

Her paintings predominantly feature Australian coastal landscapes, as well as a series of self portraits.  There is a rhythm and aesthetic that is completely unique to her work, and in part, this is down to her love for oil paint as a medium.

“I like oil paint as a medium because of the immediacy of it and what you can do with it the colour and mark making. I love the quick, spontaneous, in the moment nature of paint. I also love the different textures you can create oil paint by mixing it with other mediums but it’s also great thick on its own straight out of the tube, you can really push it around,”

“I usually have a general vision what style/ what I want the painting to look like except it’s always best when you make the decisions in the moment and let the painting have a life of its own and don’t get too caught up with the initial preconception. When you just go with the flow and get in the zone the process is much more exciting and rewarding,” she explains.

Inspiration garnered from Impressionism, is clear throughout Seabrook’s work. She explains that impressionists and post-impressionists influence her, because the focus on colour and mark making speaks to her,

“With the use of oil paint, this is where painting first starts to excite me. In particular I love Monet’s big late Waterlilies, they are big fields of beautiful colour applied really loosely leaving exquisite marks, you get completely lost in them,”

“I also really love some more recent Australian landscape painters such as Elizabeth Cummings and Luke Sciberras, again I just love their use of colour and mark making with oil paint. I also really love contemporary Aboriginal art, from artists such as Emily Kame Kngwarrey where the landscape becomes more abstract,”

You can see more from Seabrook on her Instagram, and in the gallery below.

Do you know an artist (or are YOU an artist) who creates beautiful or thought-provoking work and whom you think should be featured on Mamamia’s Voulez-Vous Project? Send an email to lizzie.marton@mamamia.com.au.