Kahli Perkins skilfully creates luminous abstract paintings that reveal her commitment to materials, surface, light and colour. Evoking stillness, her works convey the beauty found in order, patterns and moments of quietude.
Her meditative ethereal paintings on canvas are borne of a painstaking process that involves physically manipulating the canvas into geometric forms prior to paint application. Using a unique spray technique, she builds layers of beguiling colour to achieve paintings that have an illusion of depth and that appear to glow from within.
In her upcoming exhibition, she will present a series of these airbrushed acrylic paintings on canvas alongside watercolours on paper. Creating works that encourage viewers to slow down can be seen as a subversive and urgent act in our oversaturated and constantly stimulated visual culture. The gentle mesmerising nature of these paintings both induce and demand surrender to their quiet presence.
A graduate of a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University, Kahli has been included in several group exhibitions. She was a finalist in the Sunshine Coast Art Prize in 2021 and her work is held in private collections around Australia.
Image: Kahli Perkins  Interference Pattern (In lockdown with Monet’s Water Lilies) 2021  acrylic on canvas  183 x 152 cm  Photo by Carl Warner