On painting inside out

Exploring the hauntingly beautiful portraiture of artist Sally Bourke

You don't look at a Sally Bourke painting; you make its acquaintance. Not in the same way you do when you meet a stranger on the street, it’s more significant than that. It’s an encounter with a presence that you feel impelled to understand. Quietly you fall into the painting just like you fall in love, completely unaware of your own infatuation.

Born in Sydney and raised in country New South Wales, Australian artist Sally Bourke’s practice began when she was a child, with a box of cheap, round watercolour paints and a pot of flowers. Sitting on the verandah of her family home she made a painting of the still life that her mother later deemed to be “actually good”. And though Bourke claims she wasn't born an artist, that early watercolour creation stirred something in her subconscious, a force that would later prove too loud to silence. 

From floriculture to the human form, Bourke’s work has evolved into a particular portraiture style, portrayals that are created in attempts to make reconciliations with her past. With her mind in the present moment and her imagination in the future, Bourke seeks to depict the basic human experience, painting people from the inside out. 

I don’t want to embellish life stories or the relationships I have. I think that the world can be a beautiful and scary place. I want to talk about the spaces in between, where all the white noise is gone and there is an understanding or a resonance. I see you, and you see me.

While many portraits throughout history have been commissioned to represent a subject’s appearance, Bourke’s work delves deeper, looking past the individual’s façade to the core of who they really are. In an age that seems to champion the social media persona over the true self, Bourke seeks out the authenticity behind the avatar.    

I think that the Internet and social media have a lot to do with [my approach]. People don’t communicate the way they used to and perception is everything. I don’t want to look at people as a group or a persona.  I like to see past that. Fragility is a common language and I want to speak it.

Working on ten to twenty paintings at a time in her Newcastle-based studio, Bourke utilises multiple mediums, constantly experimenting with each in order to create new ways to tell her stories. Using mostly mount boards as her base, Bourke works with dry pigments, aerosols, oils, watercolours and acrylics, having perfected the art of layering to ensure each texture remains stable and set. And though she owns roughly 400 paint brushes—mostly because she dislikes having to clean them—Bourke often works with scraping tools and rags. The result is a painting style that is both beautiful and bizarre, derived from abstract language, intensely gestural, and heavily rooted in the Australian landscape. As fragile as it is fierce, Bourke’s work explores the entire ambit of human emotion, but always with a subtle tinge of the mysterious, and sometimes the macabre. You tear your eyes away from a Sally Bourke painting with the sense that you know the subject deeply but also not at all, always with the feeling that you’ve met someone you may never forget. An encounter with one of Bourke’s paintings is an interaction; it’s not an observation. 

The intense emotionality of the work has nothing to do with her materials, but rather what happens beyond the brush. For Bourke, painting is a deeply spiritual discipline, and portraiture a style that aims to capture the essence of its subject. Identifying and empathising that essence is one of Bourke’s greatest strengths. 

I try to peek behind the persona or face that people present to the world and just observe. I can’t tell you exactly how I do that because I don’t want to sound like a crazy person…Let’s just say this: if I have lived it, I can probably understand why people are the way they are.

Stripping back the filters that keep us sheltered—sometimes applied consciously, sometimes completely unawares—Bourke tunes into the truths that we sometimes shyly hide, skeletons and secrets that embody our delicacy and our darkness.   

I’m cursed with being a complete empath.  I guess painting is a way to channel energies into positive outcomes. I can’t explain the knowing but it has put me into some pretty dark spaces from time to time. When I paint another person I’m merely stating that life is dark and beautiful, and I for one, will admit that I see it.

It’s Bourke’s raw honesty, in tandem with her intuitive nature, that allows her to produce works that embody such a powerful aura of authenticity. Describing painting as a revelation, Bourke allows her figures to guide her brush, following the portrait until its completion. When asked whether you can liken the process of painting with raising a something real with its own personality, Bourke agreed completely.  

That idea is core to my practice. I have learned to respond to my work through listening. When I was a younger artist I tried to dictate to my work. That is where the resonance comes; hopefully if it speaks to me it will speak to the viewer. 

Given the organic nature of Bourke’s artistic process, it's unsurprising that each of her works is born with its own distinct disposition, hypnotising the viewer with its undeniable presence. Pushing her practice to its limit each time she enters her studio, Bourke continues to redefine the ways in which we represent the self, offering the kind of unapologetic sincerity our current cultural climate hungers for. Describing painting as a reassurance that she is capable and strong, Bourke’s portraits remind us that, behind the veils that we wear and the personas that protect us, each of us hold our own true story that is worthy of being told. 

This story first appeared in 10011mag print issue 04.