Wild Flower is an exhibition of painted flora by Australian artist Stephanie Monteith. Many of the flowers come from the artist’s suburban garden, located in Dharawal Country in Southern Sydney. Some plants in this garden are endemic to the region, while others are from different parts of Australia.

This body of work consists of five new oil paintings on board and one on canvas, and a limited edition metal fusion print. The images explore relationships between beauty and excess, observation and imagination, permanence and decay, cultivation and wilderness, and demonstrate the artist’s masterful use of color and spatial arrangement. 

Monteith selects flowers for her garden based on their variety of color and texture, whether found in the leaves, branches, or other plant structures, as well as in the blooms themselves. She treats the garden like a three-dimensional painting, curating plants in anticipation of the paintings that will come through careful observation. There is a lot of composition and visual interest that have already been considered by the time she is ready to pick up a paintbrush.