about the artist
Bella Bacon is an emerging artist based in Darwin and Sydney, Australia. She completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School in 2019 and received the National Art School Indigenous Art Centre Internship Award 2020, located at Ernabella Arts in Pukatja Community, in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands.
Bella’s practice delves into the profound connection between human experience and relationship to the environment. Inspired by the interplay of memory, time, and place, Bella creates evocative scenes that capture both the transient and the eternal.
Bella works primarily on raw linen and wood, considering their materiality and interaction with form, allowing colour and texture to be visible beneath the paint. Her process emulates the private world of her subject as she entertains a sense of physical fragility and the temporality of their experience. Bella implements this transience in her painting by rejecting a display of conventional skills in certain areas of her work and instead allowing for intentional ambiguity.
Bella’s ongoing series, ‘It Runs Deep,’ explores the symbolism of the red riverbed, weaving narratives that speak to the resilience of human nature and the inextricable link between identity and environment. Through her work, Bella invites the viewer to pause, reflect, and engage with the subtle whispers of the world around us, creating a rich visual dialogue.