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Ember Fairbairn ( Born Kate Elizabeth Fairbairn 10/04/1975 Melbourne) is an artist based in Melbourne Australia. Ember Fairbairn has had numerous exhibitions in Victoria, Australia and also Sydney and Queensland, Australia, Singapore and New York.

Education and background
Graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne Australia in 2017.

Ember attended the Queensland College of Art in 1993 but due to personal circumstances did not continue. She instead embarked on a more personal journey exploring her artistic life through life experiences whilst continuing to paint.

She also has tutored many in the art of Encaustic painting.

Ember works mainly in Oil paint, Encaustic and Hybrid or Sculptural painting, also known as Expanded painting.

Work
Ember Fairbairn is mostly known for her densely layered oil paintings of abstracted organic shapes which reference nature. the work is presented as traditional paintings within a frame and also as expanded paintings which occupy various spaces and scales. The work also investigates the way in which colour can impact on the viewer and the space in which it resides.

Her work is both about painting itself and how it interacts with space, dimension and form. The pictorial themes often speak about the experience of time, referencing mythology and our relationship with and within nature and the primordial and instinctual nature of humanity.

Ember is interested in what makes a painting libidinal, and how that illustrates how that resides in each of us and what removes us from it?

Ember is also interested in how can female cultural memory be rewoven and transformed.

''“Creating art for me is a communion with all of potential, it is a meditation where one “loses” self and merges into all that is and all that is yet to be. The process dictates the form. employing colour, mark making, symbol and shape through oil paint, and texture via the encaustic process.I want to be instructed by the subconscious and by surrendering to what wants to be made, I can be educated from that place".''

Ember has exhibited since 2000,  Prior to which she trained in Queensland. She is in private and public collections in Australia and internationally, having exhibited regularly in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Singapore. She has also exhibited in New York.

She is currently represented by Manyung Gallery, Melbourne Australia and Traffic Jam Galleries in Sydney.

Past: Platform72 Sydney, Kaleidoscope Gallery Sydney, Tony Gill Galleries Queensland, Agora Gallery New York.

Awards
2018 Finalist - Ravenswood Womens art Prize, Emerging artist

2012 Acceptance into start programme for emerging artists Arrordable Art fair Melbourne

1995 Sunshine Coast Institute of Tafe Award for Painting

1995 Gold Rush Exhibition printmaking award

Personal
Ember grew up in both Melbourne and Queensland. She lives and works North East of Melbourne with her two children.