Artist Name: MIRANDA HINE

Artwork Title: TOWARDS THE ROCK

Medium: Oil on board

Size: 30 x 22cm

About the Artist:

Miranda Hine is an artist, writer and curator based in Meanjin/Brisbane. With a background in sculpture, video and installation, her current practice centres on how painted imagery can be placed together to suggest new meanings.

Artist Statement:

This work is a small window into the big landscape heading towards Bald Rock in Northern NSW. The drive on this particular morning was quiet. Ours was the only car on the road and the mist closed in on us, but we were eager to climb the rock. When we did, we saw nothing from the top but a thick white sky.

Judge’s Comment:

This painting truly captures the human relationship to the experience of that moment.

Artist Name: PETER BERNER

Artwork Title: SINGLE GUM

Medium: Acrylic on marine ply

Size: 36 x 38cm

About the Artist:

Peter graduated from the NAS in the mid nineties. He has been toiling away ever since while also working in the field of entertainment and broadcasting. He has had some success having been a finalist in several art prizes including, The Archibald Prize, twice,

Artist Statement:

This work is about gesture, mark, and balance, with the hope it evokes a sense of the Australian landscape. It is a memory of the trees surrounding our first house in Wahroonga where we lived when we arrived in Australia.

Judge’s Comment:

Have always admired the confidence in the execution of this minimal style of painting. Capturing our memories on a subliminal level.

Artist Name: LISA KURTZ

Artwork Title: UNNATURAL_#7

Medium: Video

Size: 30 x 40cm

About the Artist:

Lisa Kurtz is a Brisbane|Meanjin-based photographic artist whose work explores concepts of memory, place and time. Lisa has been a finalist in the Clayton Utz Art Awards, Head On Photo Awards, Olive Cotton Award for Photographic Portraiture, and the Milburn and Lethbridge Landscape Prizes. Lisa teaches Contemporary Photomedia at Central Queensland University.

Artist Statement:

Video Link: https://vimeo.com/692245218

This work is part of an ongoing series exploring how human spaces operate differently to natural spaces, and my own odd and awkward relationship with nature.

Notes:
1. Image submitted is a video still
2. Video would be run on continuous loop in an exhibition context
3. Aspect ratio: 16:9

Judge’s Comment:

Another take, in a completely different way, of the dancing bag scene from American Beauty. The lovely chance and sate of flux we call life.

Artist Name: MIKA NAKAMURA-MATHER

Artwork Title: RIVER CITY SEASONS

Medium: Japanese timber, photographic transfer, ink, Japanese pigment, steel hinges.

Size: 15 x 30cm

About the Artist:

Mika Nakamura-Mather DVA, BVA (Hons First Class).
Born in Fukushima in Japan, Mika has been a resident of Australia since 2002, living in both Sydney and Brisbane. Mika is a graduate of the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University.

Artist Statement:

When I first moved to Brisbane, I thought about how strange it was that there was just one season - hot and sticky. Gradually over the years, I have come to appreciate the subtle differences my adopted home goes through and the changing moods of the river city.

Judge’s Comment:

Beautifully composed work. Ghostly figures in a familiar altered landscape. Would love to know what the back looks like

Artist Name: KATE L BARRY

Artwork Title: GLANCE

Medium: Oil on canvas, framed

Size: 92 x 182cm

About the Artist:

Kate has held solo and group shows throughout Qld and sold privately and by commission internationally. Upcoming group exhibition is at NERAM New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale. She has awards and recognitions including 2nd in the Milburn Art Prize, online Finalist NEAP 2022, Clayton Utz and Lethbridge finalist numerous times.

Artist Statement:

I want to express my feelings and translate my emotional response into form. Grim and difficult struggles many people have endured over the last two years have affected the Australian emotional landscape. The glimpses of light and the flickering movement out of the darkness convey the quiet beauty of reflection.

Artist Name: JOE WHYTE

Artwork Title: DISTANCE

Medium: Oil

Size: 21 x 36cm

About the Artist:

Having grown up in Melbourne's inner-city, I have long been inspired by it's streets, architecture, and people. Increasingly my work has looked at the juxtaposition between the close proximity in which we live, and the distance and the sense of isolation which so often comes with life in cities.

Artist Statement:

'Distance' was inspired by our time spent in lockdown. There was a profound sense of sadness walking those formally bustling streets, and instead being greeted by emptiness.

Artist Name: ALEXANDRA PLIM

Artwork Title: LANDSCAPE AND SHOCKING PINK

Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

Size: 104 x 154cm

About the Artist:

I am an expressive abstract artist based in Sydney. I paint intuitively with acrylics and often incorporate a variety of mixed media. My work is energetic and playful, using colour, texture and bold marks to create drama and movement. I am truly addicted to the irreverent process of creating a painting. Much like rehearsing a play or improvising on stage, painting requires me to be in the moment.

Artist Statement:

In the studio during the year 2022 is proving challenging, especially with all the things happening in the world now. I wanted to purely focus on paint and colour, experimenting with different mixes and marks, allowing the composition to form slowly. The trees at the top were the icing on the cake, and the energetic and hopeful pink allowed the painting to feel balanced.

Judge’s Comment:

Bold, expressive and experimental. A lethal combination.

Artist Name: ESTHER NEATE

Artwork Title: THAT SINKING FEELING

Medium: Porcelain

Size: 19 x 8cm

About the Artist:

I explore representations of transformation and am particularly interested in the way we engage with our environments; and the traces that build up over time due to our existence.

Artist Statement:

‘That sinking feeling’ explores our complex relationship with a landscape in crisis as it is increasingly subject to extreme elemental forces.

Artist Name: HENRI VAN NOORDENBURG

Artwork Title: COMPOSITION LXXIX

Medium: Handcarved inkjet print

Size: 100 x 100cm

About the Artist:

Henri scratches the paper and pigment to leave markings with varying degrees of pressure and detail to control the outcome of the mark. By adding natural pigment dyes to the paper before etching the pieces gain more depth and reference points as Henri moves into new practice methodologies.

Artist Statement:

‘Composition LXXIX’ explores the effects on the natural environment due to global warming. The artwork interrogates the actions of industrial human activity. The work renders these actions synonymous with a symbolic Hell, and champions a return to the Divine, not in a religious context, but towards the ultimate divinity of nature.

Judge’s Comment:

This artwork really draws you in. At first one is not too sure of what they are seeing but on closer inspection the methodical process becomes evident. A creative and engaging fusion of art and politics

Artist Name: CAROLYN V WATSON

Artwork Title: ATTRACTION TO THE AFFECTION OF THE MEMORY

Medium: Epoxy clay, fungal threads, beeswax, sheep bones, 23k gold leaf, bees wax, shellac, reclaimed timber, convex and concave mirrors pieces, antler pieces, ink

Size: 37 x 43cm

About the Artist:

Carolyn V Watson is a multi-award-winning artist whose 20-year practice, chronicles her life history and experiences through explorations of surface and form . Watson employs labor-intensive methods , and a repetitive physicality that echo and mimic, her recurring motifs of natural history, found imagery and personal memory .

Artist Statement:

A sculpture that had completed its exhibition life was retired to a rich patch of greenery in our garden. Over 18 months, it became part of an ecosystem which gradually altered the surface of the original form. Now reconstructed, this landscape has become a collaboration between bone, timber, maker, and time.

Artist Name: MARK FORBES

Artwork Title: EMPTINESS

Medium: CType photographic print

Size: 102 x 120cm

About the Artist:

Mark Forbes is best known for his considered and atmospheric documentary photography. He employs film as his medium of choice.

Forbes' photographic approach comes from an underlying fascination with people and their interaction with the environment. He has been widely exhibited throughout Australia at public and commercial galleries.

Artist Statement:

The work is a medium format film image from my ‘Beautiful Solitude’ series. The series aims to show the viewer that beauty can be found in all aspects of our lives. All we need is the time and space, both physical and emotional, to be able to pause and experience this.

Judge’s Comment:

The beauty of banality captured so well. Such a haunting photograph of the familiar

Artist Name: AMANDA PENROSE HART

Artwork Title: BUTTER CLOUD

Medium: Oil

Size: 110 x 110cm

About the Artist:

Graduated from Queensland College of Art
Lived in Brisbane for 30 years
Currently living in Sydney
I PAINT FULL TIME

Artist Statement:

‘Butter cloud’ is of a place I aim for, but I don’t know where it is and I'm sure I will never make it there.

Judge’s Comment:

This work really captures the way we emotionally respond to landscape. Imaginary or not, this simple brooding landscape offers hope

Artist Name: KAYO YOKOYAMA

Artwork Title: WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE

Medium: Glass

Size: 40 x 30cm

About the Artist:

Born in Japan, migrated to Australia in 1997. Bachelor of Visual arts and Master of Fine arts from Sydney University. Studio is located in Blackheath NSW. Art works seeks for 'belonging' to the society, to the nature. I believe art enlighten our lives in this complicated society.

Artist Statement:

We suffer from many disasters and damaging events each year, yet we are still here. This work was developed after a horrendous bushfire hit my town. There were blackened and burnt trees and devastated landscapes, yet we still saw sun rays hit the top of the forest. Trees rejuvenate and so does a community. The world is a beautiful place.

Artist Name: PATRICE WILLS

Artwork Title: BOUNDLESS PLAINS

Medium: Oil on linen

Size: 50 x 50cm

About the Artist:

Patrice brings experience working across the arts, health and education sectors into her work which reflects and explores the human condition and spirit, utilizing painterly materiality to fuse the figurative and the abstract. Patrice’s work is frequently selected for art awards and accrued in private and public collections

Artist Statement:

'Boundless Plains' is a response to my experience riding in Kosciusko, and the complex mix of issues pertaining to land, environment, colonisation, and Australian identity. Through the painting process, I unpacked my personal response to the beauty of country and riding, along with the issues embedded in the landscape.

Judge’s Comment:

I love the immediacy of this and the confidence in the painting style....but that rump at the bottom right hand corner interferes with the balance.

Artist Name: DAVID USHER

Artwork Title: BETWEEN THE TREES'

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Size: 51 x 76cm

About the Artist:

My practice involves interpreting the landscape, through abstraction, as a direct response to the en plein air experience.
Ultimately my aim is to create works that reveal new layers of 'landscape' with each viewing, both as first viewer, and subsequently for anyway who is interested in investigating similar themes.

Artist Statement:

The work shows new adventures into Western Queensland before all the rain. The country was dry but it still emitted a radiancy, particularly late in the day. Interpreting the landscape through the act of paint is a such a beautiful puzzle unable to be solved. I guess that is what keeps us returning again and again.

Artist Name: PANCHALI SHETH

Artwork Title: TRIUMPH ON THE GANGES RIVERBANK

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 51 x 41cm

About the Artist:

I am a Sydney based artist and have had several group and solo exhibitions. I have been a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize and also in the Hunters Hill Art Competition. I have been involved in other art competitions. April 2022, I have been accepted artist residency in France.

I recently won a highly commendable art prize in the Lane Cove Art Society Exhibition.

I have a Master of Art (MA) and a Master of Fine Art (MFA) from the College of Fine Arts in Sydney.

When I migrated to Australia in 1983, I brought with me my Indian heritage. I had to adapt my art into my new environment, and therefore, my art has been influenced by Western thinking and Indian culture .

I started my art by using my Indian culture and combining it with western traditions which, to me has become hybrid.

Artist Statement:

The scene is inspired from Pahari Indian miniatures which are about the triumph of a Goddess after a hunt on a beast infested riverbank.

Judge’s Comment:

A painting which successfully uses intuition to look at memory and history. The landscape of the setting so delightfully, naively and freely composed

Artist Name: KERRY JOHNS

Artwork Title: COAST GARDEN IMAGINAIRE

Medium: Acrylic on canvas

Size: 51 x 51cm

About the Artist:

I have been painting and exhibiting professionally for forty years. My work is regularly shown as a finalist in national prizes. The judges’ comments for my EMSLA prize win 2016: ‘Kerry’s work held our attention and captivated our imagination…. Her work has ‘staying power’’. Represented by Artsite Contemporary Sydney.

Artist Statement:

Direct observation is my usual way to begin but this work was painted over an earlier ground which allowed abstracted combinations and the coastal trees at Broulee. A colourful garden at the water’s edge became an imaginaire, a world in which time and space has a different reality.

Judge’s Comment:

Such a unique interpretation of the landscape displaying a fertile imagination.

Artist Name: JAN JORGENSEN

Artwork Title: RED HILL TWILIGHT

Medium: Acrylic on linen

Size: 85 x 85cm

About the Artist:

I have painted the inner city for over 30 years - interested in transforming light
and regeneration.
My grounding was in studies with William Robinson.
Two years as a teenager, and a Visual Arts Diploma as a mature age student at
Kelvin Grove (3years). His teaching on colour study and perspective has been invaluable.

Artist Statement:

St. Brigids is my Red Hill/Paddington muse. Loved, feared, respectable, and hard to ignore (at least visually) as it's grim face dominates the suburban landscape.
Mrs. Murphy's house stood here, burned down, the land donated.
Lesser mortals spill down the hill in deep shadows and light - a passing story.

Artist Name: MARTYN HODGE

Artwork Title: HOME#4

Medium: Oil on linen

Size: 61 x 51cm

About the Artist:

Born in 1985, I am a self-taught, Brisbane based painter but spent most of my life on a small farm in the Northern Tablelands of NSW. Growing up in the bush I developed a deep connection and love of the landscape, animals and plants and these motifs often occur in regularity across my work.

Artist Statement:

This painting is a representation from memory of the farm I grew up on in the Northern Tablelands of NSW. I’ve attempted to explore the deep connection that exists in landscape and the ideas of what we consider ‘home’ through these painted memories. In centre stage and stealing the show are my now deceased horses, Hunter and Freckles.

Artist Name: MARLIES OAKLEY

Artwork Title: A BIG COUNTRY IN SMALL BOXES - A GLIMPSE IN TO 184 AUSTRALIAN STORIES

Medium: Collage - The inside of matchboxes and old books

Size: 56 x 81cm

About the Artist:

I’m a Collage Artist - "The images are my Paint. The scissors are my Brush."
My works are intricately hand cut using whatever I can lay my hands on, with each image being used only once, the artworks are totally original and are caught in a “time and place

Artist Statement:

The vastness and diversity of Australia, its landscapes and interiors were impossible to capture in one image. I tried my best with 184 but even that wasn't enough.

Artist Name: EMILY APPLEBY

Artwork Title: NIRVANA 1

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 102 x 102cm

About the Artist:

I am an amateur artist from the Gold Coast who loves experimenting with bright and bold colours to create different and unusual perspectives. I also hold a great admiration of the way basic patterns can be intermixed with the most elegantly simple ideas to create something gorgeously complex.

Artist Statement:

Playgrounds always remind me of the fun times of my youth; despite being older though, I will always jump right on the equipment whenever I see one. This painting depicts my cat and I progressing throughout life but never losing the sense of simple enjoyment and serenity. This is my personal nirvana.

Judge’s Comment:

Love the naivety of this work. The colours so alive with positivity. A story to joyously unravel.

Artist Name: GEORGE FETTING

Artwork Title: SWOLLEN NO 1

Medium: 6mm Acrylic face mounted archival print

Size: 50 x 50cm

About the Artist:

George is a visual artist and photographer who grew up in Brisbane.
His obsession for light, shape and form is reflected throughout his works, where he often experiments with new techniques. Eight of his portraits are housed in the permanent collection of the NPG in Canberra.

Artist Statement:

Swollen pays homage to the endless cycles of Australia’s unrelenting climate.
The vast extremes that are now part of everyday life.
Storms, floods, monsoons radiate outwards giving, and also taking life

Artist Name: JAYDE CHANDLER

Artwork Title: DIFFERENT CHILD

Medium: Mixed

Size: 101 x 101cm

About the Artist:

Jayde Chandler is a self-taught, contemporary landscape artist, residing in outback Queensland with her husband and four children on their family owned sheep and cattle station. A fourth generation grazier, Jayde’s deepest desire is to express what feels like a genetic connection to the land.

Artist Statement:

In this work, I use an array of mediums including spray paint, acrylic, and oil stick. I use both a palette knife and brush to create energy fuelled works that embrace intuitive mark making and imperfections. My creative endeavours allow me to document my landscape and share with my collectors the place that I have lived in and loved deeply all of my life.

Artist Name: RISTE

Artwork Title: SNAKE AND LADERS

Medium: Photograph

Size: 67 x 78cm

About the Artist:

I am an Australian emerging artist from the Wollongong NSW area and my work practice focusses on photography. My work centres on the notion of identity and in particular the influence a landscape can have on a person’s sense of self. A surrounding landscape is a significant aspect of the formation of culture and with it the development of the individual. My surrounds, I grew up in, the protruding industry, the fibro houses, the timber palings all contributed to this sense of self. Landscapes change as result of human activity, however so to human activity changes as a result of changes in landscape. My work reflects this continuity and change; a change in the landscape has brought with it a change in my own identity.

Artist Statement:

This shot is of the steelworks in Port Kembla. I captured the large structure’s ambiance and light illuminating the steel. I aimed for this photograph to highlight the colossal impact the steelworks have made on the past, present and future despite its simplistic appearance.

Artist Name: JUDITH ARONOVITCH

Artwork Title: THE AUSSIE PUB

Medium: 3D mixed media

Size: 20 x 25cm

About the Artist:

Judith is a disabled artist who resides in Melbourne. She is passionate about creating dioramas that depict everyday life scenes. She delights in using miniature models in a humorous way that is easily relatable. Judith is inspired by the work of Japanese artist Tatsuya Tanaka and Caribbean artist Nena Sanchez.

Artist Statement:

Nothing like the old-fashioned Aussie pub can be found anywhere else in the world. This is a tribute to all the pubs in Australia and their local communities that were destroyed in recent fires and floods.

Judge’s Comment:

The naivety and seemingly simplicity of this work only aids the universal interpretation of the Aussie pub. Can clearly feel the enjoyment of the process.

Artist Name: MICHAEL SIMMS

Artwork Title: UMBERUMBERKA RESERVOIR (STUDY)

Medium: Charcoal on paper

Size: 30 x 42cm

About the Artist:

Michael Simms is a multi-award winning artist based in Sydney whose work is characterised by dream-like depictions of the human figure and the landscape. Ranging from traditional portraiture to explorations of identity in the digital age and queer culture, his diverse paintings and drawings combine elements of classicism, romanticism, surrealism and psychology.

Artist Statement:

This drawing was created from a residency at the Broken Hill Art Exchange. Since the pandemic began, I’ve had a yearning to go back to Broken Hill to explore my family history. The resulting works are coloured by my childhood memories and the poignancy that comes with the passage of time.

Artist Name: SARAH WOODWARD

Artwork Title: HARBOURING IMPRESSIONS

Medium: Mixed media

Size: 60 x 60cm

About the Artist:

Woodward uses a mixture of photography, drawing, paint and charcoal to capture Australian landscapes, creating a more profound understanding of the country. thoughtful reflections of the city and country relationships. Recognising the larger area and larger history of this land than the one usually experienced.

Artist Statement:

This work is of one of Australia’s icons, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but reimagined. While it is part of a dark city skyline, as is true in our city lives and within our own bodies, the surrounding water is the largest and most important part.

Artist Name: RYAN ANDREW LEE

Artwork Title: TEMPLES OF DOOM, 2022

Medium: Video/Installation

Size: 0 x 0cm

About the Artist:

Ryan Andrew Lee is a conceptual new media artist whose practice explores alternative ontologies and
epistemologies which are strongly informed by First Nations people and community. His work employs
experimental film-making processes including cinema vérité and slow cinema to present contemplative
observations on contemporary environmental and socio-political issues. Lee's work explores interdisciplinary thematics of psychogeography, deep topography and landscapism to suggest deeper sense and perception of place in order to restore and preserve ecological, historical and cultural knowledge and values.

Artist Statement:

Video Links:
Temples of Doom Online Trailer - https://www.ryanandrewlee.com/art/temples-of-doom
Long version: https://vimeo.com/691196828
‘Temples of Doom’ is a moving image work that engages the issue of endangered pagoda rock formations and sacred First Nations rock-art sites in the recently announced Gardens of Stone State Conservation area of the Greater Blue Mountains.

Artist Name: AI SHAH

Artwork Title: INCOMING TIDE NO.2

Medium: Oil

Size: 120 x 120cm

About the Artist:

I moved to Brisbane 16 years ago from Japan. The vivid colour of nature in Australia and loneliness made me start painting. I am fascinated by the everchanging form, quality, colour and energy of water, and everyday I practice how I can be like water.

Artist Statement:

I was fascinated to see this invisible and silent, yet enormous energy created by the moon. I asked my 9-year-old daughter to paint anything on the 1st layer of the canvas and I tried to connect with the subject by submerging or rising her marks and including her colours in the water.

Artist Name: TERESA POON

Artwork Title: SELECTION FROM 'BRITISH PAINTS II'

Medium: Acrylic on paint swatches

Size: 30 x 10cm

About the Artist:

Teresa is an emerging artist living and working in Brisbane. She works primarily with acrylic and draws inspiration from the colours and transient details of everyday life.

Artist Statement:

These works are part of my 2021 collection 'British Paints II'. Each painting involved the careful selection of details and colours highlighted in each scene. The hope is that these works encourage viewers to look at the world around them and notice colours in the everyday.

Judge’s Comment:

Such a charming and well fleshed out concept tenderly delivered

Artist Name: J.F.A. HYND (JESS)

Artwork Title: STILL HERE (HOWARD ST., ROSALIE)

Medium: Acrylic on board

Size: 60 x 45cm

About the Artist:

J.F.A. Hynd is a painter based in Brisbane, Australia whose works lovingly portray historic urban settings and botanicals near her home.

“I walk regularly throughout my suburb and often stop to admire the characteristics of old houses and gardens, which are quite a contrast to modern homes. Perhaps I am experiencing a type of ‘pre-nostalgia’."

Artist Statement:

I often stop to admire this house: the eclectic mix of plants and trees in the garden, plus both fences… not to mention, the peeling paint on the garage. There’s an unassuming quality, an innocence, and fragility about this place. But also, a kind of resilience, too. Aged and worn; but still here.

Artist Name: STEVE TYERMAN

Artwork Title: DOWN TO THE SANDS AGAIN

Medium: Oil on linen

Size: 60 x 120cm

About the Artist:

I am a full-time professional artist living and working in the hinterland of the Gold Coast. I predominantly paint landscapes and the occasional self portrait just because I'm always around. My main aim in art is to filter my thoughts and experiences through paint.

Artist Statement:

‘Down To The Sands Again’ explores a common scene of the coastline of eastern Australia which is the shaded path leading down to the beach under Pandanus trees. I wanted to strip the landscape back to its fundamental forms which I’ve created out of abstract gestural marks, leaving the blank linen to suggest the rest.

Artist Name: LEAH THIESSEN

Artwork Title: WARATAH

Medium: Oil on poly canvas

Size: 103 x 103cm

About the Artist:

Thiessen isn’t beholden to a single medium. Moving between oil paint, spray paint, enamel, pencils, oil sticks and ink across large canvases, the artist builds thick layers that juxtapose the fine base of raw linen or canvas.

Artist Statement:

My work taps into the emotional gravity of a place, its memory, its pulse, its rawness, and power. For me the paintings communicate a deep-felt relationship with the earth, embodying a spirit of place and its atmosphere.

Judge’s Comment:

Your eye dances across the canvas. The immediacy of the process referencing the flux of landscape and life.

Artist Name: JULIE PURCELL

Artwork Title: HOMESTEAD PANORAMA

Medium: Oil on board

Size: 62 x 162cm

About the Artist:

Julie Purcell holds a Bachelor of Fine Art (Hons) from the Queensland College of Art. A member of Moreton Bay Arts Council (MBAC) and the Redcliffe Art Society (RAS), in 2021 she won the RASart Exhibition of Excellence and was included in Moreton Bay Regional Council's 15 Artists exhibition.

Artist Statement:

‘Homestead Panorama’ was painted en plein air at my family's property in Beebo, Queensland. It depicts the off-grid infrastructure created by my Grandad. In paying homage to his resourcefulness and hard graft, I fuse traditional painting methods with a DIY construction aesthetic to build upon the metaphorical potential of salvaged materials.

Judge’s Comment:

So love the vibrancy and life evident in this painting. The painting seems so effortlessly created. It brings me such joy.

Artist Name: SARAH WAGHORN

Artwork Title: TOO WET TO GO OUT

Medium: Oil on poly cotton

Size: 57 x 57cm

About the Artist:

British born Australian, Sarah draws upon her interest (and former career path) in homes and gardens to explore these worlds in oil paint. It is the Australian light which plays a key role in her work and how that plays out in each scene. She is driven by the forces of colour mixing and the ensuing brushwork which results in an ‘alla prima’ artwork/painting.
Sarah has been a recent finalist in The Muswellbrook, Calleen, Waverley and National Capital Art prizes, and shown in a number of group shows in regional NSW and Melbourne as well as a successful solo show in Canberra in December 2021

Artist Statement:

I am fortunate to have a light filled kitchen which looks out over the rolling hills of the Lower Hunter region. I can soak up the sunlight which pours in through the windows spilling onto the floor. My dog is hopeful, but the grass is so wet, and the lure of this scene is too much to pass up.

Artist Name: ROSE WILSON

Artwork Title: GALAH'S OVER THE DRY PADDOCK

Medium: Oil

Size: 90 x 120cm

About the Artist:

Rose Wilson has been a practicing artist for over 30 years. Predominately a successful portrait painter Wilson first ventured into landscape when she moved to the picturesque town of Trentham in regional Victoria's high country about 18 years ago. Surrounded by farms and forests the bush demanded her attention and she spends more and more time painting the bush, sheep, cattle and birds that are of abundance in this area.

Her beauty was hypnotic and it didn’t thank her long before i fell under her spell, but instead of trying to replicate her with the brush, i felt her.

Artist Statement:

This painting is of the sheep that reside out the front of my studio, I've painted this scene many times but in different seasons. Birds are of abundance here, much to the farmers dislike but for me I love the sound of cockatoos or galah’s.

Artist Name: LYN GRAHAM

Artwork Title: THE BRISBANE RIVER FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE BAY

Medium: Oil

Size: 120 x 180cm

About the Artist:

Lyn Graham is a Brisbane-based painter and printmaker whose work examines our relationship to the natural world. She works with the Studio West End group and in her own studio. She holds a Diploma of Fine Art from the Brisbane Institute of Art.

Artist Statement:

Consisting of 72 individual postcard-size oil paintings, framed as a single work, and a hand-stitched artist’s book, ‘Brisbane River from the Mountains to the Bay’ documents the ever-widening waters and ever-expanding skies along the 340km from the river’s headwaters near Mt Stanley down to Moreton Bay.

Artist Name: JASON MCDONALD

Artwork Title: SNOWY WETHERS

Medium: Photograph printed on cotton rag

Size: 88 x 64cm

About the Artist:

Jason McDonald enjoyed a successful career in Sydney as an award-winning graphic designer before returning to the family farm near Mudgee where he grew up surrounded by nature. His absolute affinity with the bush shines through all his art practice and has won him much critical acclaim.

Artist Statement:

I took this photograph on the family farm near Mudgee, NSW. We run fine wool merinos and have kept them alive through drought, fires, and floods. Last winter we had the heaviest fall of snow in 40 years. Through my artwork I hope to share first-hand experience of change in weather conditions in country NSW.

Artist Name: SALLY REYNOLDS

Artwork Title: GONDWANALAND RAINFOREST (DIPTYCH)

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 76 x 122cm

About the Artist:

Sally Reynolds graduated with an Advanced Diploma of Fine Arts (Distinction) from The Newcastle Art School in 2015. Reynolds has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions and selected as a finalist in several Art Prizes. In 2021 she was a recipient of the 2021 Newcastle Art Space Mentorship Programme with Mentor Peter Gardiner.

Artist Statement:

I started painting this series after a strong desire to reconnect with nature after lockdown. Visiting one of the most significant remaining stands in the world of Antarctic Beech, I felt a strong need to communicate through my art the beauty of these fragile temperate rainforests; we have to act now to stop Global Warming and protect the lungs of the planet.

Artist Name: HOWARD SEARCHFIELD

Artwork Title: POSEIDON

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 100 x 150cm

Artist Statement:

This painting was inspired by the swirling patterns and movement in the tumultuous Deepwater off the rocks, early morning after a storm.

Artist Name: ANITA WEST

Artwork Title: WINE GLASS BAY

Medium: Acrylic on linen

Size: 140 x 180cm

About the Artist:

I am fundamentally a landscape painter. All of my work is based purely on my love for this land, and my passion for its unique beauty. I love the chaos of the bush, the ‘inspirit’ of the rocks and trees, the dryness of the earth and the layers of history and culture that are intricately woven within it.

Artist Statement:

A rainy walk through the wilderness of the Tasmanian bush reveals colours of life and the breath of land. Coastal peninsulas are washed into the cloudy bay and eucalypts play amongst the granite boulders.

Artist Name: NAOMI WHITE

Artwork Title: WITCH TREE

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 122 x 168cm

About the Artist:

I love working with light and the way it changes a vista throughout the day. The different shadows and patterns it makes and the way it can completely change colours from one moment to another depending on the time of day or even the season you see it in. I hope to encourage the viewer to have an emotional reaction rather than a rational response.

Artist Statement:

When I came across this tree in Cataract Gorge on a frosty morning in Launceston, I imagined it would be the perfect place for witches to sit and create potions. The twisted branches, naked from the winter cold, exist year after year, evoking mystery, and a sense of eternal time.

Artist Name: LIAM WALDIE

Artwork Title: WHEN THIS DAY IS DONE

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 120 x 90cm

About the Artist:

Liam Waldie is based on the Mornington Peninsula and creates oil paintings that are inspired by the Australian landscape. Through layers of colour and mark making, Waldie draws on personal memories to paint dreamlike mindscapes that offer an intimate journey through the work.

Artist Statement:

The haze drifts over the distant hills as the trees cast their growing shadows and the poplar reaches higher toward the sky. The river shines and twists along its bed. No beginning or end in sight.

Artist Name: MELISSA LUJAN

Artwork Title: TIBROGARGAN, BEERWAH'S HUSBAND AND COONOWRIN'S FATHER

Medium: Acrylic and spray acrylic

Size: 61 x 91cm

Artist Statement:

This painting references the Dreamtime story about how the Glass House Mountains evolved. It is a tale of the love between Tibrogargan and his wife Beerwah and the betrayal and disappointment of their son Coonowrin.

Artist Name: CHRIS BENNIE

Artwork Title: 3030

Medium: Video with sound 5m 43s

Size: 80 x 130cm

About the Artist:

Chris Bennie is a Brisbane-based artist and electronic music producer. He works across different mediums to explore how quotidian subjects can be represented to evoke something extraordinary. His work has been exhibited nationally in major Australian art museums and he lectures in art at Griffith University and elsewhere.

Artist Statement:

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_gdg7FJfjo

In 3030, four helium-filled numerals bob and weave while tethered to council bins. Whatever fanfare these balloons once celebrated has been relegated to backstreets and a waste-dump of forgotten urban dreams. Hints of dystopia, eery solemnity, and loneliness are echoed in the film.

Judge’s Comment:

Great little piece of video but the concept has a little too much ham.

Artist Name: ASHLEE BECKS

Artwork Title: MELTING GARDEN

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 100 x 75cm

About the Artist:

Ashlee Becks is an emerging artist based in Brisbane. In 2020, Ashlee graduated with First Class Honours in Fine Arts at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith. In October of that year, she won the Emerging Artist Award at the Brisbane Portrait Prize and also exhibited her first solo show at Grey Street Gallery in Brisbane. In 2021, Ashlee undertook a short term residency at Salamanca Art Centre and was selected as a finalist for the Brett Whitely Travelling Art Scholarship and the Sunshine Coast Art Prize. Ashlee has participated in many group exhibitions and has been the recipient of the Arts in Bark Bursary and the Individuals Funding Program by Arts Queensland.

Artist Statement:

‘Melting Garden’ is a contemporary take on the Australian landscape. Inspired by the wilderness of Cradle Mountain and the suburban streets of Hobart, the artwork combines the native with the introduced. A material sensibility guides the work, with thick impasto mark making acting as a metaphor for self-discovery and healing prompted by exposure to a new environment.

Artist Name: ALEXANDRA MATTHEWS

Artwork Title: ALL I SURVEY

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 54 x 64cm

About the Artist:

Alexandra's paintings narrate an intimacy with urban landscape as it transitions and transforms with light, natural and artificial. Alexandra’s work is highly detailed as she strives to depict architectural features accurately and capture the essence of the iconic area, where the present and past collide. Painted in a hybrid of illustrative and realism

Artist Statement:

Fragmented and shaped by electricity, incongruously, nightfall can expose things lost or rendered inconspicuous in daylight. Glowing windows, streetlights and the neon aura of the CBD push back the dark and add their magic.

Artist Name: CHRISTOPHER V. LAPA

Artwork Title: ONE PIXEL VIEW 001

Medium: Digital print

Size: 32 x 45cm

About the Artist:

Christopher studied at Sydney College of the Arts achieving 1st Class Honours in Media arts majoring in photography. Their work has been shown at the Hobart Biennale, Sydney Art Month and Trocadero Art Space Melbourne. When not making art they bush walks off trail, carefully.

Artist Statement:

Off trails in the bush, I always feel I'm seeing 1% of the landscape compared to the traditional custodians and land owners of Australia. These works are a 1px slice of a larger landscape photograph to try and reflect that. We must acknowledge the knowledge lost and damage done to move forward. #treatynow

Artist Name: KATE MAREK

Artwork Title: MORNING AFTER 1

Medium: Oil

Size: 102 x 152cm

About the Artist:

Continuing my fascination with reflections and the nature of the Brisbane River, these works show me processing the events of my community as it recovers from major flood. Having lost my home and studio to the 2011 floods, I felt so deeply for those affected.

Artist Statement:

This was the view at the end of my street in the early morning after the floods peaked in late February 2022. So sad and still so beautiful, charged with such emotion in the stillness before the bustle returned. I wanted to record this moment.

Artist Name: GRACE CROSS

Artwork Title: THIS CONNECTED LAND

Medium: Mixed media: rusted silks & vintage linen, metal, stitch framed on canvas with Perspex

Size: 100 x 25cm

About the Artist:

“Nonrepresentational in form, each of my artworks is a personal vocabulary of marks reflecting Texture as the primary focus; creating layered mixed media/textile artworks with a fusion of rusting, fibres, fabric, paper, stitching, gold leaf, and/or embellishments.” Grace is an awarded textile artist winning various awards in Brisbane Art prizes and selected juried exhibitions.

Artist Statement:

This artwork journeys through the relationship between Indigenous people and their close connection to land through identity, culture, and ceremony. Care of their land provides a deep sense of purpose and belonging. Stitch and rusted silks weave the story through various landscapes and the deep relationship between land and its people.

Artist Name: BROOK PARKINSON

Artwork Title: I LOVE A SUNBURNT COUNTRY

Medium: Film

Size: 5 x 14cm

About the Artist:

Brook Parkinson is a Brisbane born resident who began early film/art studies in 2019 which then lead to beginning a bachelor of fine arts, majoring in visual arts at the Queensland University of Technology. His work is predominantly digitally constructed works centred around photography and filmography.

Artist Statement:

‘I love a sunburnt country’ depicts obscure renditions of famous Australian works. Instalment on the left side of the screen is a modern approach to Frederick McCubbins’ Down on His Luck (1889) and Howard Arkley's Suburbia (1993). It re-enacts a brief telling of Australia's history.

I love a sunburnt country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ZlYQZ4c8Q

Artist Name: KELLIE NORTH

Artwork Title: THE LOST GIRL

Medium: Photography digital art

Size: 75 x 75cm

About the Artist:

Kellie is an award-winning photographer and visual artist with a deep desire to connect to nature, to her audience and to herself. She plays with the landscape, light, movement and nature, to create evocative figurative images, that are connected to the sub conscious and are deeply engaging.
Kellie moves with practiced precision, working silently, listening to nature and to her own internal landscape. She was drawn intuitively to this rock, this landscape. She senses something here that resonates with a feeling bubbling to the surface of her mind, an emotion that signals a truth within her. She hopes to capture the moment so she can portray it as a visual story as fully as she experiences it, here and now.
Flowing through a series of poses, in this moment, she is of the earth, she is an expression of the nature we see around us. Through her musings Kellie is unearthing understandings about nature and our relationship to it, the self, and the female experience and form. Shot by shot, each new insight is exposed.
Kellie is at home here, in her body, cradled as she is by the land. Later, she is just as at home in her studio selecting images, building up layers, playing with colour and light, and striving for an image that reflects that which first captured her months before.
In the completed piece, Kellie sees her ideas resolve. Through her art, she invites us to discover something about ourselves that we had perhaps not previously known or recognise we have lost.
In this way, Kellie’s art resonates below our skin, her images thrum in the core of our chest like a heartbeat. “Remember…” they tell us, “Remember your strength, your heart, your connection, your humanity.” And with carefully choreographed movement and with waves of colour and light, she shows us all that she has uncovered.

Artist Statement:

In Far North Queensland I visited the beautiful and remote area of Elim Beach (Thiithaarr) on Guugu Yimithirr country, a tribal nation stretching from River Annan, south of Cooktown, to Princess Charlotte Bay in the north. This piece, one, in a body of work, resulted from the deep connection I felt while standing among the richly coloured sandstone cliffs.

Artist Name: PAT HALL

Artwork Title: HANGING TOGETHER

Medium: Watercolour

Size: 122 x 91cm

About the Artist:

Pat Hall paints large scale watercolours on stretched paper canvases which are then sealed, front and back, with a UV stabilised and waterproof coating. She floods her paintings with colour, breathing new life into the medium.

She is inspired by the textures and colours of the Australian bush and gardens.

Artist Statement:

Eucalyptus leaves, as individual as a fingerprint, hang together in unity. Absorbing and reflecting our pervasive Queensland sunlight, they perfectly illustrate our country’s unique and varied land.

Artist Name: KATHY ELLEM

Artwork Title: PRODIGAL SUMMER

Medium: Oil

Size: 76 x 127cm

About the Artist:

I am a rural based artist in North East Victoria, with my own gallery in Beechworth. Exhibiting and winning awards both nationally and internationally, I've been painting and teaching for the past 20 years, always with the need to capture the magic of light and shadow.

Artist Statement:

It is a very unusual summer in Northeast Victoria with unseasonal regular rainfall. Our ordinarily burnt country has never lost the green tinge, creating a colour palette very different to previous years. That last trickle of light with a rich magenta tint was certainly a challenge to capture.

Artist Name: JAYNE CURLE

Artwork Title: ELYSIAN SUNRISE

Medium: Oil

Size: 30 x 30cm

About the Artist:

Jayne Curle thinks of her art as a positive mantra; the absence of dimension and colour in some of her figures signifies disconnection. It's a reminder to be cognisant of where our minds are at any given time and where they need to be, in the present.

Artist Statement:

The couple on the left are secretly haemorrhaging about how they’re going to pay the mortgage on their new Palmy Penthouse. After the confronting day he had yesterday, the guy in the middle is questioning why he went into Child Psychology. The guy under the tower has a hole in his pocket.

Artist Name: GARY ABKIN

Artwork Title: LAND OWNER

Medium: Oil based enamel on plywood

Size: 65 x 61cm

About the Artist:

Painter from California living and painting in Australia.

Artist Statement:

Recent work inspired by the Australian landscape and the people that inhabited it.

Artist Name: JAIME KISS SGAMBATTI DOS SANTOS

Artwork Title: VOYAGE

Medium: Paper

Size: 45 x 45cm

About the Artist:

From a contemporary perspective through constructive language, Jaime Kiss finds his artistic drive in existence and reality itself. Enlightened by science, philosophy, culture and his own sense of curiosity to observe our time, he challenges the perspectives about the world and its inhabitants, translating materiality into geometric compositions using the power of colour and simplicity.

Artist Statement:

Growing from the horizon upwards, the sky holds the moon, allowing its light to travel through to touch the ocean. Flowing from the horizon downwards, the moonlight swims across the surface of the water until it is washed onto the land.

Artist Name: OTTO SCHMIDINGER

Artwork Title: CREVASSE

Medium: Oils on canvas

Size: 101 x 101cm

About the Artist:

Otto has 40 years experience as a freelance illustrator to the advertising industry, For the past few years he has concentrated on painting and sculpture.He has been a finalist in more than 50 major art competitions and has won several prizes for his works. His painting are in collections in Australia and Europe.

Artist Statement:

A deep crevasse with its variety of rocks reflecting multiple colours in a ray of sunlight on a stormy day created this dramatic image.

Artist Name: MARCEL DESBIENS

Artwork Title: MORNING REFLECTIONS

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 91 x 153cm

About the Artist:

Marcel was born in Quebec, Canada and is now living in Landsborough. He is the founder and director of Bienarte Art School in Brisbane. His research for the ultimate oil painting technique leads him to the Renaissance Masters. Marcel has been painting and teaching those methods for over 40 years.

Artist Statement:

The land around me can sometimes look very magical. It is all about the angle I view the space. I am always amazed at the water reflection effects, transforming the real world into a surreal and abstract pattern.

Artist Name: FIONNA MADIGAN

Artwork Title: BARREENONG RD IN SUMMER

Medium: Oil painting

Size: 85 x 55cm

About the Artist:

I commence with compositional and thematic intentions but I am also led by the paint and the process, i invite improvisation and am open to all possibilities until an idea and image start to emerge. I then devote myself to clarifying the image and bringing it forward into the world.

Artist Statement:

I walked this dirt road every day for the past 2 years as Covid curtailed our wanderings. As seasons shift, I notice the changes in light, colour, and texture.

Artist Name: ANTHONY QUIDONG

Artwork Title: CLOUDLAND - COOLUM BEACH

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 100 x 150cm

About the Artist:

Anthony Quidong has been a finalist in Brisbane Portrait Prize 2021, Lethbridge Landscape Prize 2021, Lethbridge 20000 and Clayton Utz Art Award. He paints what he sees and elucidates his real world into art.

Artist Statement:

Australian skies paint an ever changing panoramic landscape that captures a fleeting moment in time and space where Cloudland merges with the spectrum of moody blues.

Artist Name: RORY O'CHEE

Artwork Title: SUNRISE RIDGE - THE LANDFORM AS ARTEFACT

Medium: Photographic print onto archival art rag, displayed in a glass shadow box

Size: 85 x 130cm

About the Artist:

Rory O’Chee is a very exciting photographer who brings a unique and uncompromising perspective to landscape photography. Born with Down Syndrome, Rory was originally attracted to photography as a medium to express his creativity.

His photographic practice based on quintessential focus, free from distraction or superfluous elements in the composition.

Artist Statement:

The landform is displayed in a glass shadow box like a museum artefact. This is a metaphor for the process of capturing and displaying the landform as a photographic image.

Artist Name: RUDIGER WASSER

Artwork Title: JUNKSPACE - CONFUSION

Medium: Digital photograph

Size: 50 x 75cm

About the Artist:

Ballina based photographer Rudiger Wasser holds a Master of Arts in Visual Arts from the Queensland College of Arts (QCA), Griffith University, Brisbane. He is a self-taught photographer who has exhibited in Byron Bay, Lismore, Lennox Head, Stanthorpe, Brisbane and Melbourne. He has judged several photographic prizes and won numerous awards in photography.

Artist Statement:

‘Junkspace’ seems to be an aberration, but it is the essence, and the main thing. The product of an encounter between the escalator and air-conditioning (Rem Koolhaas ‘Junkspace’, a critique of non-committal, flexible, claustrophobic realisations of commercial interests in the architecture of private-public spaces).

Artist Name: MAGGIE CROSS

Artwork Title: REFLECTIONS ON BANK

Medium: Charcoal & acrylic on board

Size: 32 x 27cm

About the Artist:

Trees within the Australian landscape have always inspired me and so they have become the feature of my drawings and paintings.
Drawing is a strong element in my art practice. I love working with charcoal. It becomes powerful as a medium on its own or combined with painting mediums

Artist Statement:

I work a lot with charcoal and love the freedom of drawing with this medium. This work is in an ongoing series where I look at the contrast of light and the shadows made. Not all is exposed. Leaving the plywood untouched is on purpose.

Artist Name: DAVID HENDERSON

Artwork Title: TIDAL SWAMP

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 60 x 80cm

About the Artist:

David Henderson is a Brisbane-based painter. He received his training at the Royal Academy Schools in London and has held solo exhibitions in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, London and Rome. He is the recipient of a number of awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Queensland Art Society.

Artist Statement:

The ebb and flow of the tides, shifting shadows and sparkling reflections are a reminder that the self-contained world of this tidal swamp is in a constant state of flux. I wanted to use effects of light and water to suggest its dynamic character and as a reminder of nature’s endless cycles.

Artist Name: DAVE GROOM

Artwork Title: BETWEEN THE SUN AND MOON

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 94 x 126cm

About the Artist:

Dave Groom completed a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Graphic Design in 1990, but his interest in landscape painting was one that grew gradually after years travelling throughout Australia and oversea, working as a tour guide, through some of the Worlds most spectacular National Parks. This extensive travel made him aware that some of the most unique landscape was at his back door, in the world heritage forests of Lamington.
He has been painting professionally for 25 years. Dave has held over 20 solo exhibitions in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, including a recent show at the Tweed Regional Gallery.

Artist Statement:

The rainforest near my Beechmont studio is an intricate world of life that has evolved over millions of years. What we see as we walk through such landscapes is trees and mountains, but what we don't see are these evolving life forms. This painting is a dreamlike work that attempts to portray the beauty, energy, and complexity of the forest.

Artist Name: RICHARD BARDSLEY-SMITH

Artwork Title: THE ROAD HOME

Medium: Watercolour

Size: 53 x 75cm

About the Artist:

Studied town planning & architecture
First prize for watercolour in Hunters Hill Art Show 2019;
Accepted as member of Australian Watercolour Institute 2019;
Exhibited in Taiwan as part of the AWI Exhibition 2020;
First prize for watercolour in Sydney Royal Easter Show 2003 & 2021;
Finalist Gallipoli Art Prize 2021;
Finalist Lethbridge Landscape Prize 2021

Artist Statement:

At times our landscape is anything but straightforward. It can be hills, valleys, high land, and gullies. It can be harsh and dry where green shoots struggle. But sometimes it’s the road home.

Artist Name: LARS VESTER

Artwork Title: GLASSHOUSE GAZE (VIEW FROM MT NGUNGUN, GLASSHOUSE MOUNTAINS)

Medium: Oil on linen

Size: 76 x 152cm

About the Artist:

Lars Vester is a Danish born artist living in Brisbane, working predominantly in the medium of oils.

Lars has had a number of successful exhibitions in both Europe and Australia, including various solo, group and Finalist's exhibitions.

Some of his career highlights include winning the Artworld Landscape Prize, Best Oil at the Rotary Art Spectacular and taking out First Place in two separate Painting Categories at the worldwide Light, Space & Time Art Exhibitions.
 
Lars’ work is represented in several private and corporate collections around the globe.

Artist Statement:

As I explore the majesty and timelessness of the Glasshouse Mountains, I’m reminded of the Gubbi Gubbi people’s deep reciprocal connection with this primordial place, and I begin to contemplate the eternal qualities of the landscape versus the fragility of our species in today’s tumultuous world.

Artist Name: LEIGH SCHOENHEIMER

Artwork Title: DROUGHT

Medium: Timber, bamboo, found objects, paint

Size: 68 x 14cm

About the Artist:

Multi-disciplinary artist Leigh Schoenheimer is known for her thought provoking, multi-panelled paintings and idiosyncratic assemblages. Regularly shortlisted in an array of significant art awards, her work was recently toured throughout QLD’s regional gallery network courtesy of Flying Arts Alliance and is part of many private and public collections throughout Australia.

Artist Statement:

Repurposed components come together to make general reference to Western Queensland locations, visited on past journeys. The yellow ‘tree’, red and white stick, dried timber fence post and hot water tap all speak of the long droughts, common to these parts.

Artist Name: KATHERINE CUSACK

Artwork Title: MADE TO FEEL - MAD TO FEEL

Medium: Acrylic

Size: 91 x 151cm

About the Artist:

It is all about finding the colour harmony that translates to the canvas what I am feeling at that moment. It is like using a language I had not known I knew. The result is rather fanciful and dream-like, with elements of true authenticity which makes a powerful statement.

Artist Statement:

This artwork exists as a reminder we are made to feel. Some of us have so many feelings that they torture us mad. May one glimpse of the land and light of this sunrise pull on hardened heartstrings. A warm, hopeful escapism of the emotional headaches we carry.

Artist Name: JOHN HUTTON

Artwork Title: ALBURY SIGNAL BOX

Medium: Oil paint

Size: 40 x 50cm

About the Artist:

I am a practising artist living at the Sunshine Coast. Prior to this, I taught art in schools in Australia and South Africa. I have participated in numerous group shows over the years as well as holding eight solo exhibitions. I work mainly in oils, but drawing plays an important part in my artistic practice.

Artist Statement:

This painting is part of my latest body of work which explores notions of time, space, distance, and history. I have focused on capturing bridges and railway stations as structures that record the passing of time and place; environments that are imbued with traces of human presence, but now stand alone.

Artist Name: PETER TANKEY

Artwork Title: BRUNSWICK, ECHO.

Medium: Oil on canvas

Size: 66 x 110cm

About the Artist:

Peter Tankeys studio is based in rural Victoria.

His landscape painting retraces his personal history, through Melbourne's inner and outer suburbs and the regional city of Ballarat.

A winner and finalist of several art prizes, his work appears in public and private collections in Australia and abroad.

Artist Statement:

This painting is a reflection on the gentrification and ever shifting nature of the inner suburbs surrounding Melbourne. What were once factory hubs have given way to apartments and this has caused quite a lot of discontent in the earlier part of this century when this painting was initially conceived.

Artist Name: WAYNE MILES

Artwork Title: CANOWINDRA

Medium: Oil and acrylic on canvas

Size: 76 x 102cm

About the Artist:

Owing Miles Gallery Dural NSW until 2007. Being invited to exhibit in an international exhibition. Winning an acquisitive prize and being short listed for prizes at Art Gallery of NSW and at NSW regional galleries. Recently I designed figures for an installation commemorating the 75th Anniversary of The Cowra Breakout.

Artist Statement:

Canowindra is a small regional NSW town about 30 minutes’ drive from where I live. The main street in known for its unusual curve and old-time verandas.

Artist Name: MINHAN CHO

Artwork Title: GLORIOUS MORNING, MOUNT PLEASANT

Medium: Oil

Size: 30 x 77cm

About the Artist:

I am a self-taught artist who create landscapes and seascapes. I travel extensively throughout Moreton Bay from country to coast to study from actual scenes by pleinair paintings and drawings. My goal is to reinterpret the essence of the scene to create energetic paintings through improvised but concise brush strokes.

Artist Statement:

This painting is recreated from the plein air sketch in Mount Pleasant, QLD. I used Alla prima technique which is done in one session with a limited palette. I tried to express the contrast with morning lights at the pasture and the shadows by spontaneous brush and knife strokes.

Artist Name: ALISON MURPHY

Artwork Title: SPRING COLOUR

Medium: Oils

Size: 45 x 75cm

About the Artist:

The soft blue grey distance and beautiful colours of the Australian Landscape challenge me to create artwork that conveys Australia's unique light. As a child growing up in a rural area I was surrounded by nature. My early inspirations were the artists of the Heidelberg School, Streeton, McCubbin and Roberts particularly.

Artist Statement:

The soft blue grey distance and colours of the Australian Landscape challenge me to create an artwork that conveys Australia's unique light. This painting was inspired by a glorious spring day near Mount Victoria in New South Wales.

Judge’s Comment:

I can imagine myself standing right there smelling the country air. Such a dignified and authentic response to the tranquil scene. The subtle interplay of light and shadow bringing the scene to life.