We caught up with artist Marina Rolfe ahead of her exhibition solo exhibition The edge of holding at ARC ONE Gallery opening on April 15th. Marina reflects on the slow attentiveness behind what often appears intuitive, the delicate tension between orientation and ambiguity, and the ways her paintings negotiate the surface – building, erasing, and reforming – to remain open, atmospheric, and endlessly unfolding for the viewer.
Marina Rolfe, Waiting, to not interrupt, 2026, oil on linen, 122 x 152.5 cm. Courtesy of the artist and ARC ONE Gallery
Your early training was in classical painting in Moscow. How does that foundation continue to shape the way you approach abstraction today?
My early training in classical painting definitely still sits somewhere in the background of what I do. It gave me a strong technical knowledge and sensitivity to structure; things like composition, spatial relationships, and how an image holds together. Even though my work is now abstract, that awareness is still there.
I think it shows as something underlying the painting. It allows me to push the work quite far into abstraction without it completely losing a sense of orientation. At the same time, my current practice is almost working against that training. Instead of constructing an image in a controlled way, I’m more interested in allowing the painting to develop through process, through layering and responding to what’s happening on the surface. So there’s a kind of tension between that training and the way I work now.
Installation view of Looking back to see if they still look back at me, 2024, Marina Rolfe, ARC ONE Gallery
Your work often feels intuitive and emotionally driven. Can you talk about how intuition guides your process, and where conscious decision-making comes in?
I think what gets described as intuition in my work is actually quite slow and attentive. It’s not really about making quick or impulsive decisions; it is more about responding to what the painting is doing.
I start the work without knowing what it will look like when it’s finished. As the painting develops, I’m constantly adjusting things: colour, form, density; so there’s actually a lot of decision-making happening. But those decisions come from being with the painting and responding to it. There are also moments where I deliberately pause or hold back. That’s quite important, because it stops me from resolving the work too quickly and gives space for something else to come through
Marina Rolfe, Of the hour’s secrets, 2025, oil on linen, 198cm x 152.5cm. Courtesy of the artist and ARC ONE Gallery
Your practice sits within landscape abstraction, but resists fixed place or narrative. What draws you to this space between recognition and ambiguity?
I’m interested in that space because it allows the painting to remain open. If the image becomes too defined, it can feel closed. But if it goes too far into abstraction, I lose my connection to it. So I work somewhere in between, where there are traces of landscape or space. Things can shift, dissolve, and sometimes reappear. I think that space also invites the viewer to spend time with the work, to orient themselves and then re-orient again. It becomes about experiencing how the painting unfolds.
Marina Rolfe, Artist in studio, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and ARC ONE Gallery
Looking ahead to your upcoming exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery, are there new ideas, materials or directions you’re excited to explore?
In the upcoming exhibition, I’m continuing to develop this idea of painting as a kind of negotiation with the surface.
One thing that’s become more important in the work is this process of almost undoing the painting — pushing it to a point where it feels like it might fall apart or disappear, and then working back into it. I often find that something new only begins to appear after that point, once the original image has been disrupted. So the paintings go through these stages of building, then almost destroying, and then slowly re-forming into something else. That’s where the sense of negotiation really sits for me.
I’ve also been thinking more about how to sustain that threshold, where the painting stays open, but something can still begin to appear. So the works are becoming more focused on atmosphere, and on how forms gather gradually through layering, erasure, and reworking.
Marina Rolfe, From afar, 2026, oil on linen, 81 x 120 cm. Courtesy of the artist and ARC ONE Gallery
When someone chooses to live with one of your paintings, what do you hope the work continues to offer them over time?
I hope the work continues to unfold over time. I don’t see my paintings as being immediately legible; they can be experienced differently depending on how long you spend with them. Forms might appear and disappear, or certain areas might come forward at different moments. So I hope the work creates a space for ongoing looking, something that remains open and continues to shift over time.
Rolfe’s exhibition The edge of holding at ARC ONE Gallery runs from 15 April until 23 May
@marinarolfe
@arconegallery
arcone.com.au
