Lust, Love & Loss by Tallulah Nunez

About Lust, Love & Loss by Tallulah Nunez

I have been painting for 30 years, and my style has changed a lot over that period. For the last 4 years I have developed a more drawing based style of painting, working with inks as well as acrylic paint.  

I have been concentrating on plants in a landscape, The Flirt and the Slap, and My Boyfriend's Other Girlfriend are examples.  

I often use the silhouette of a flower, for example a sunflower, and then proceed to fill it in using patterns, dots, squiggles, circles inside circles to create uniquely otherworldly images. I start with the one image and build everything around it. There are no preliminary drawings. I have learnt not to over think what I am making, allowing the painting to develop slowly in its own time.  

Occasionally I start with a title and build it from there but mostly it starts with one small idea, and I wait to see what will happen.  

Lust, Love & Loss is a series of 11 plant portraits that depict romantic emotional moments in an individual's life. I started the series painting imaginary plant bouquets moving through a landscape. While these works were being developed, I was moving into my daughter's home in Auckland for a 2 year stay while she is travelling in Europe. For the last 5 years my husband, Keith (writer) and I have been permanently house sitting.  

I now have a permanent art studio and have been able to unpack all my personal things that had been in storage, including some beautiful Crown Lynn pottery I had collected.  

Very quickly this pottery and other collectables started being featured in the paintings and the plants moved from the landscape into interiors.  

My work is constantly evolving. I use the previous completed painting to develop the next one. I am constantly looking back over the work I created in the last 30 years, and I take images and ideas from the past to develop what I am creating now with my more practiced skills. 

I love being challenged when I work, I strive to be unique. The best day in my studio is when I surprise myself with unexpected developments that mysteriously appear on the canvas almost unintentionally and without forethought.  

When I am working, I listen to audio books, this stops me from over thinking what I am doing, and I get in a trance like state of creating repetitive patterns.