above: 2023 studio photos by Sammy Hawker
I am an Australian artist, grateful to live and work on Ngunnawal, Ngunawal and Ngambri Country in Kamberri/Canberra.
I combine drawing, printmaking and painting to create intricate and immersive works on paper. Through my practice, I aim to evoke a sense of place, and to convey the humbling and restorative experience of walking in nature. I am consistently drawn to the threshold of rock and water, where striking reminders of geological time intersect with daily, seasonal and climatic changes. Circling back to place by revisiting the same site from multiple perspectives, or over multiple days or years, I engage in processes of seriality and layering to suggest the accumulation of experience, memory, perception and personal significance.
Often scaling my work in relation to my outstretched body, and frequently using my fingertip as a mark-making tool, I seek to embed a sense of care and value in the environments I depict, through time and touch. My choice of limited colour is considered and symbolic. For example, my ‘Endurance’ series centred on the environment of Guarella/Guerilla Bay, Yuin Country, South Coast NSW - a place that holds memories of meaningful time spent with my immediate family in the last summer of my mother’s life. In this body of work, blue came to signify emotion, memory and distance. More recently, in ‘Wana Karnu’ 2024, burnt orange tones were transferred directly from rusting steel, inviting a natural process to inform and disrupt my drawing, while referencing the interaction of iron, oxygen and water in the environment of Mutawintji National Park, Barkindji and Malyangapa Country, Far West NSW.
I graduated from the A.N.U. School of Art & Design (Printmedia and Drawing, First Class Honours, 2010) after undertaking a liberal arts education on scholarship at Morgan State University, Baltimore, USA (2005 – 2009). My artistic practice has been nurtured by field-based residencies and cultural exchanges, particularly the Embassy of Spain’s Torres Travelling Scholarship (2011), Bathurst Regional Gallery’s Hill End Residency (2015), The 2019 Bundian Way Arts Exchange on Yuin Country and the 2022 Broken Hill City Art Gallery’s Open Cut Commission.
My work has received national recognition. In 2023 I was recipient of the Canberra Arts Patrons Organisation’s Mandy Martin Art and Environment Award. In 2024 I was Winner of the River of Art Prize, in 2021 I was Winner of the Burnie Print Prize, and in 2020 I was Winner of both the Fisher’s Ghost Art Award and the National Works on Paper prize.
My work is represented by Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne.
