Artist Profile: Amica Aindow

Ditching the paint brush, Amica Aindow uses alcohol, saffron and coffee to make rivers of colour on canvas. Nabila Chemaissem writes.

There is an intricate flow residing within Amica Aindow’s art. There is magic, born of a love of nature and an imagination that had her “legitimately believing [she] was a character in an Enid Blyton novel” as she roamed the Isle of Wight as a child. Born in Germany and raised in the United Kingdom, it was these early days of collecting nature, creating stories, and drawing entire days away that inspired the inextricable link between her art and the natural world. 

Nowadays, Aindow resides in Queensland, drawing inspiration from the native bushland and presenting it in vibrant swathes that captures the landscape and offers it back in abstract forms.

“I will choose my palette, set my canvas down, working on one piece at a time,” she says. “Then once I begin, that’s it, no walking away; the paint is fluid and has a life of its own, flowing and winding across the canvas with the unpredictable beauty of colour form and texture.”

Her works comprise mostly earthy colours, though sometimes she dabbles in brighter palettes. “I love the alchemy of mixing my own paint with ochre or using organic materials like gin and coffee,” she says. “Alcohol mixed with ink creates marvellous random effects.” 

She rarely uses brushes, preferring natural elements such as air to create tidelines, coaxing colour to move like deltaic rivers along the innate textures and depressions in the canvas. 

Often, Aindow welcomes the natural world into her art too. Foraged material gathered from local bushland presents in the unique marks she layers into the paint. Turmeric, saffron, tea and brewed florals: these are evocative, her usage of them playing upon the senses in subliminal ways. “As I create, it reminds me of natural forms – rock pools, bark on a tree or patterns on a shell that informs my next action on the canvas.” 

Perhaps it is this way of meditative, intuitive creation that inspires us to slow down too. The flow of colours inhabiting Aindow’s art are reminders of quiet calm, and the joys of weaving our innate self with the beauty of our world.

Find Aindow’s work at Soho Galleries, Sydney; Art Images Gallery, Adelaide; Art Lovers Gallery, Gold Coast; Bay Gallery, Cotswolds UK and online.

Featured Image: Artist Amica Aindow. Photo: Naturally Jek. Courtesy: the artist.

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