About Ostara

Ostara paints in oil, mostly on linen, in a converted workshop with north light and no clock in it. The work is made in series. Each one starts with a single observation — a colour that keeps recurring, a shape in a landscape, a way light behaves against a particular wall — and runs for a year or more until it stops producing anything new. Individual pieces are rarely finished in the order they were begun; several are usually in the room at once, and the last one often changes the first. Nothing is painted from photographs. Studies are made on paper on site, sometimes over weeks, and the paintings are built from those in the studio. It is a slow way to work and it produces a small number of pieces a year, which is the reason a waiting list exists rather than a shop.