Saren Dobkins is fascinated by the unseen worlds that we inhabit, exploring vulnerability and courage while evoking our need to connect through narrative, figurative paintings. Drawing from memory and initially using gestural marks, using a visual language developed over several years, she works towards an image that provokes the many nuances of a philosophical idea. From a young age, she has used oil paint to explore, despite the chaos we are trying to navigate, how we strive for balance, externally and within.

  

EDUCATION AND EARLY EXHIBITIONS

While having studied a broad range of academic disciplines over several years, Saren concurrently continued to paint and is largely a self-taught painter. She grew up in Zambia but has lived for the most part in Australia. Her first exhibition in 1989 in Adelaide was a sell-out, and she has continued to show her work in over 35 exhibitions. Her personal experiences led to an early focus on the disenfranchised, highlighting disempowerment of women, children, and refugees, through the medium of printmaking, photography, sculpture and paint. More recently figures and objects within the work engage energetically, within a painterly landscape that is multilayered, symbolic, and intuitive, created from an imagination informed by a rich personal journey.  

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RECENT CAREER

Although the artist now lives in Tewantin, in regional Queensland her work continues to address political and social issues that are current and international in scope.  Since arriving in Noosa in 2018, she has participated in this thriving artistic community, been a committee member of the Noosa Open Studio, the second largest Art Trail in Australia and been a finalist in several contemporary Art Prizes, including the currently traveling Queensland Regional Art Prize and won the Portrait Prize at the Eclectica Art Prize in 2021.

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THEMES

Recurring themes which include Birds, Love, Connections, Justice, HeadSpace, Seascape, Courage, Insight and Environment are used to collate this extensive body of work spanning 35 years.