Martine Emdur takes photos of women's bodies submerged in the ocean off Sydney. Back in the studio, she uses the images as a point of departure for her large-scale underwater nudes. "The scale is key to me," she told The Sydney Morning Herald. "I want people to stand in front of my paintings and get the feeling of being immersed." Apart from a few months at an art course in Sydney, Emdur is entirely self-taught. Her first solo show was held in 1997 and subsequent exhibitions trace a gradual shift away from the depiction of figures towards foregrounding the water itself. 

The works in this exhibition at Tim Olsen Gallery are her darkest, coldest and most sensual to date. One painting, Merge, shows two bodies embracing in a dark ocean pierced by fingers of sunlight. "I love the light and warmth from the sun streaming through the top of the picture…..then all the shadows give the sensation of the cold, more myseterious water below," she say. Her exhibition is selling well, but paintings are still available from $9,900 to $44,000.