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 six new oil paintings 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.

Working from life, Monteith responds to the shifting beauty of plants as they bloom, fade, and re-emerge throughout the seasons. Influenced by seventeenth-century Dutch flower painting, she brings together species that do not naturally bloom at the same time, allowing them to exist simultaneously within a single composition. 

The works also reflect an awareness of ecological and historical movement. Monteith considers the origins of each plant, whether endemic, introduced, or invasive, and the complex histories that brought them into her environment. In Large Flowers, for example, a Scottish thistle—now considered a weed in Australia—appears as both a reference to her personal ancestry and a marker of environmental disruption.

Stephanie Monteith is a Sydney-based artist recognized for her vibrant representational paintings. Using direct observation, Monteith is interested in capturing the variety of light effects upon things. This method is employed outside to work en plein air where the changing light and weather have a powerful effect on what is made. She also utilizes direct observation within the studio, where the environment is more predictable. 

Stephanie Monteith (b. 1973, Australia) completed her MFA at the University of New South Wales. Monteith has received an Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship for academic research, and has been awarded a number of other grants and artist residencies. She has won several Australian art prizes including the Jenny Birt Award for Painting at the University of New South Wales and the Gosford Art Prize. Monteith has also been selected as a finalist in a number of highly competitive Australian prize exhibitions including: the Archibald Prize, the Wynne Prize and the Sir John Sulman Prize. She has had thirteen solo exhibitions and teaches at the National Art School in Sydney. The artist lives and works in Sydney, Australia.