Peter Alwast

Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2025 - Finalist

_{Image courtesy of the artist. Photo by David Patterson.}

Artist Statement

Soap Bubbles, captures the uncanny stillness of an acrid beach scene, where hazy light, tainted by plumes of smoke, filters through a sky scorched yellow. The muted greens, blues, and silvers of the seashore reflect ghostly figures, scattered debris, and a solitary umbrella, evoking an eerie quietude—a moment of temporal suspension, as if time holds its breath before an impending collapse. In the distance plumes of smoke- byproduct of technological modernity, choke the air. Drawing from Jean Siméon Chardin’s Soap Bubbles (c. 1734), I echo his meditation on fragile, momentary beauty through soft, iridescent light, where a soap bubble floats in delicate equipoise, its fleeting existence a prelude to inevitable rupture.