When Bella Ormseth decided to transition from abstraction into representational work, she knew she wanted to incorporate narrative elements but did not want to paint people. She felt the specificity of an individual’s appearance would distract from the meaning she wanted to convey, and limit the capacity for interpretation.

The Guest, oil on cradled wood panel, 24 x 35 in.

Enter the species and specimens of land, sea and sky that populate her interior spaces, often in scenarios where one would expect to see humans. Otherworldly as they might appear, the mushrooms, botanicals, winged insects and underwater creatures do exist in real life, and can all be found around the artist’s home on Vashon Island in Washington. 

Ormseth’s latest body of work is a continuation of her Human Nature series, which began to take shape around 2018 when she “felt the need to be a student of painting again.” Born in the Netherlands, it made sense for her to study the masters of the Dutch Golden Age. Combined with her deep appreciation for the natural world and a scientist’s keen eye for observation, Ormseth had found a direction. Although her paintings have evolved, becoming more layered and complex, the originating inspiration has remained the same.

Letter from Home, oil on cradled wood panel, 24 x 18 in.

“It’s being compelled to visualize an emotional response to something that’s happening in the world or in my life and using mushrooms, plants and animals to help illustrate that emotion,” explains Ormseth. “And putting them in a context of a landscape or interior to set the stage for that feeling.”

Unlike the 17th-century Dutch still lifes, where insects and bugs often appear in the composition almost as an afterthought, Ormseth wanted to put her natural subjects center stage.

Linger, oil on cradled wood panel, 11 x 14 in.

“They are like little decorative objects,” Ormseth says of their portrayal in the historic paintings. “So, as a viewer I feel like I’m just looking at them, while I’m remaining human. What I’m trying to do is put the viewer in the mind-space of the insects or the mushrooms so that instead of this secondary role, my mushrooms are the subject, or the protagonist. They’re the ones that are really part of the story of the painting rather than something more incidental that is part of the composition. I’d like the viewer to feel some empathy and for there to be some blurring between the human and the fungal or the insect.”

In Letter from Home,a pale, long-necked mushroom pores over an old air mail letter in the company of an oversized bee. Ormseth was feeling despondent about the state of the world and like she didn’t recognize her adopted country anymore. She was looking at photos from the summer she spent studying art in Florence back in the ’80s, and found one of her apartment’s kitchen. “I was thinking about receiving this news from home,” she says about the inspiration for the painting, which carries a sense of homesickness. “There’s some nostalgia mixed in as well—the fog belt bumble bee is native to the West Coast, and the mushroom is a hare’s foot inkcap which I find very compelling because they only last for one day. They are incredibly beautiful, delicate and ephemeral.”

Memory Palace, oil on cradled wood panel, 20 x 16 in.

In Memory Palace, another painting informed by her time in Florence, a leather sea star and a Pacific spiny lumpsucker nearly touch under a vaulted archway while iridescent sea gooseberries float on the air like decorative lanterns. “I was thinking about memories and where we place them,” says Ormseth. “Some of our memories we hold so dear we make a palace for them in our minds. And it can be such a subtle thing, like a touch.”

Her subjects are more anthropomorphized in some pieces than others, as in The Guest,where a motley crew of mushrooms and creatures gather around a dinner table. “I was thinking about the importance of being polite even to people that are different,” says Ormseth, “how families come together for Thanksgiving and how we’re losing the ability to be polite and learn from one another.” Ormseth explains that the sea slug on the right (a nudibranch) is the guest, and the hosts, the mushrooms, have made the effort to make a big bowl of bryozoans, which is what the sea slug eats. “It’s about the importance of being hospitable and opening yourself up to people whose ways are different than your own.” 

Housebound, oil on cradled wood panel, 20 x 16 in.

There is a thoughtfulness in Ormseth’s work, and a sensitivity, that gives it a depth beyond its surface whimsy, like the expansive network of roots working its magic below that funny-looking fungi poking up through the forest floor.

Ormseth’s latest paintings will be presented in a show titled Spellbound at Roq La Rue Gallery that opens with an artist reception on September 11 from 6 to 9 p.m., and runs through September 26. 

Roq La Rue Gallery 117 W. Denny Way, Suite 217  Seattle, WA 98119  • kirsten@roqlarue.com  www.roqlarue.com

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