Michelle Arnott - Vignettes: Ode to the Road Trip
This exhibition of 18 small works explores aspects of road trips from Sydney to Orange and thereabouts. Each little work seeks to capture something quintessential from each location. There is an intention to acknowledge and celebrate these little glimpses.
This series is congruent with the artist’s wider art making practice that resonates with the notion of buildings as “guardians of identity “ and “silent witnesses” ( Alain de Botton, Architecture of Happiness 2006 ). The Central West has so many distinctive structures and scenes that tell stories of earlier lives and ongoing practices. These features exist in open space and light in a way that refresh and somehow comfort the city based artist.
Michelle was born in Orange but has mostly lived, studied and worked in Sydney. She has a strong background in Fine Arts and Visual Arts education and now makes art full time in her studio in Georges Heights in the Headland Artist Precinct.
In her painting practice she tends to respond to the narratives she finds in the built environment, often as an homage to enduring icons at the intersection of past and present.
Michelle has enjoyed both solo and group exhibitions, fulfilled significant commissions, has work in both private and public collections and has been a finalist in a number of prizes including the Mosman Art Prize, the Burwood Art Prize, the National Emerging Artist Prize 2022 and also won the Mosman Rowers inaugural Acquisitive Art Prize as judged and awarded by Ken Done.