Artist: Georgina Gratrix

Dirimart presents Sunday Painting, Georgina Gratrix’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition takes its title from the artist’s most productive days in her studio, which happen to be Sundays. In the calm and quiet of her workspace, away from noise and bustle, still lifes, object studies, depictions of the birds in her garden and glimpses of her life with six dogs become the focus of the exhibition. The title also carries a lightly ironic undertone, alluding to the popular English term ‘Sunday painting’, which refers to painting undertaken as a pastime.

Born in Mexico and based in South Africa, Gratrix brings an ironic and critical eye to everyday life. Still lifes and portraits occupy a central place in her practice, often depicting friends, family and occasionally well-known figures. Her vivid palette, layered impasto technique and playful, dynamic approach to both ordinary and attention-catching subjects distinguish her work through striking and intense colour. Through her sculptural layers of paint, Gratrix explores the possibilities of the medium while questioning classical ideals of beauty and the conventions of art history. Drawn to the flamboyant, the obvious and the mundane, she investigates the boundary between desire and the grotesque through a distinctive visual language.

The term ‘Sunday painting’ – or ‘Sunday painter’ – has a particular meaning in the art world, traditionally referring to someone who paints as a hobby rather than professionally: an amateur whose primary occupation lies elsewhere but who paints in their spare time, often on Sundays. The expression can sometimes carry a slightly dismissive tone, implying amateurishness or lack of seriousness. For Gratrix, however, it takes on a positive connotation associated with freedom, sincerity and a naïve approach to art – evoking work created for pleasure, without concern for academic rules or conventions.

In the exhibition, the addition of materials such as brightly coloured beads, glitter or jewellery introduces a new sense of form and perspective. Colourful floral arrangements and birds, inspired by her upbringing in Durban on South Africa’s eastern coast, frequently appear throughout her practice. Kitsch and theatrical compositions establish her exotic world within the gallery space, revealing new layers of colour and material with every viewing.

Many of Gratrix’s paintings focus on interior studio scenes and objects, mediating her relationship with people, things and the painting itself. Birds, dogs, cats, flowers and vases disrupt the disciplined structure of academic painting through the wild and liberating energy of her brushwork. For the artist, beauty and truth are not objectives; balance and harmony emerge naturally within her compositions. Works that move between figuration and abstraction explore the space between the real and the imagined, liberated from the constraints of form and perspective.

Sunday Painting, a series that navigates between types of still life, creates a playful and immersive atmosphere. On canvases that accumulate like sculptures, Gratrix presents paintings that both reference and critically interrogate artistic tradition.