Sebastion Toast
The River House | 2024 | Oil on canvas | 120 x 150cm
Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2025 - Finalist
Image courtesy of the artist
Artist Statement
This painting reflects my ongoing interest in how images can hold multiple realities at once—intimacy and structure, abstraction and story, the ordinary and the sacred.
Depicting artist Karlee Rawkins and her family, the work considers how motherhood—especially raising a child with a disability—shapes both daily life and creative practice. Rawkins describes her work as collaborative, influenced by her son, partner, and other children. I mirrored this dynamic by composing the family from a bird’s-eye view, nestled within richly patterned fabrics reminiscent of Renaissance frescoes.
By flattening the space and giving equal visual weight to figure and textile, the work questions traditional hierarchies—foreground/background, subject/support, individual/collective.
The painting invites a perceptual shift, asking us to consider the quiet significance of shared life and the structures of care that hold it. In doing so, it positions the domestic as a potent site of complexity, rhythm, and meaning.