Rastorfer explores of the nature of painting, the contradictions inherent in the painted surface and the role of serendipity in the creation of her works. Drawing on the history of abstraction, Rastorfer challenges the flatness of the painted surface and the materials she uses. Her layered mark-making creates depth where there is none and movement of a static medium on a fixed plane. 
 
Along with the careful layering of paint and pigment, Rastorfer embraces unintentional occurrences that arise from intrinsic variables in her materials. Spontaneous variances in width, tone and form lend the swirls a sense of organic growth as well as emphasising surface movement and energy. The vagaries of transience and chance have occupied Rastorfer for a number of years and she uses painterly gesture combined with ‘visual incidents’ to create works that appear to capture a single moment in time.

Each painting displays an elegant unity of rhythm, form and tone that at once pleases the eye and invites contemplation of the artist’s concepts.  Illustrating the paradox of a continual yet unmoving flux, the complexity of Lorraine Rastorfer’s paintings allows the works to be seen anew over and again.
​
Lisa Wilkie - Milford Galleries

---