We feel privileged to introduce and welcome you to our newest artist collaboration Ben Hedström. Ben is no stranger to the gallery and someone we have worked with over the last few years as Head of Creative Industries, St Andrew’s Anglican College here on the Sunshine Coast.

We have spent many hours discussing the work by Ben’s students and indulging in intense conversations about Australian art as a whole, whilst always keeping a keen eye on Ben’s own art practice!

The love for oils, impasto and palette knife is something we have shared and it is not surprising that Ben was an Archibald Finalist with an epic painting of the band Boy & Bear in 2012.

When it comes to landscape painting, the physical connection to the land and his surroundings are the core to Ben’s vistas together with his personal meanderings of life and existence.

“My work represents fleeting vignettes of contemplation, suggesting a conflation between the ebullience of connecting with the natural world and melancholy meditations on the fragility of existence.”
Ben Hedström

The final works are truly beautiful, captivating, with an inner warming glow from glimpses of geoluread under-layers. The palette knife work is strong, swift and filled with energy. To own a Ben Hedstöm painting is to capture the essence of the Sunshine Coast and a little bit more!
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