Over The Edge

Wilhelmina Burnell

Exhibition Dates :
Friday 7 – Sunday 30 November 2025
Monday – Friday 9:00am – 5:00pm
Saturdays 10:00am – 3:00pm
Sundays CLOSED

Opening Event :
Friday 7 November 2025, 5:00pm – 7:00pm

Abstract oil painting journeying deep into the wild underwater gardens off Lutruwita/Tasmania. In creating these playful landscapes
Wilhelmina Burnell seeks to evoke a favourite memory of being embraced by the natural environment, capturing the whimsy and other worldliness with a depth and naivety that invites the viewer into their own interpretation.

“In painting these playful abstract seascapes, I seek to create beautiful works that make people feel good, and maybe even evoke a favourite childhood memory of their own. Perhaps being at the seaside, running along the shoreline, or exploring rock pools, transporting the viewer to a time when the sun was on their back and they were embraced by the wonder of the natural environment.

Over The Edge is my first public exhibition and a documentation of my family’s boating adventures off the coast of Lutruwita/Tasmania, serving as a journey of transportation deep into our island’s wild underwater gardens.

With art a constant theme throughout my life, I am a self-taught artist, starting in earnest by drawing fish as a way to entertain my young children at the kitchen table. With a childhood spent on the waterways of Lutruwita/Tasmania and a passion for exploring wild places, my career as an artist began with a watercolour practice, painting the many spectacular fish species I have observed whilst free diving the waters of Tasmania and around the world.

Over the past twelve months I have been experimenting with oil paint, discovering that my true love lies with oil on canvas. My abstract paintings start with underpainting then adding layers of oil paint with oil stick on top.

Abstract oil sings for me as a way to express myself in an expressive, colourful and playful way. I use bold bright colours with undertones of softness. Some marks are gentle, dreamy, floaty and others are sharper allowing them to come forward.

Sometimes my fastest mark making is my most rewarding. It allows me to capture a fleeting feeling and the paintings becomes alive. Many of my paintings are of memories of time spent with my father who passed away when I was quite young.  It is, however, only when I finish a piece that I realise it is representative of a memory long forgotten.

This body of work uniquely captures the whimsy and other worldliness of the underwater adventures I have shared with my family over the years, with both a depth and naivety drawing the viewer in all at once.”
– Wilhelmina Burnell