FIGURE & PORTRAIT
SVETLANA - 2024
Oil paint on canvas board, framed in an antique wooden frame
Exhibited at UPLIFT, the Wet Paint Collective’s March 2024 group show at the Balmain Watch House
Svetlana is a Russian model who sat for a three-day workshop in portrait painting from life at Hamley Studio of Fine Art, Hornsby. This portrait was painted under the instruction of Sally and Ben Ryan. Svetlana, we will always have Шапокляк.
Ben Ryan of Hamley Studio has also answered my five creative questions; his answers are available here.
THE JOY IN YOUR ENDEAVOURS - 2025
Acrylic paint on a used skateboard
Finalist - Burwood Art Prize 2026
Exhibited at Burwood Library, Burwood, 25 May - 28 June 2026
Exhibited at Between Earth and Moon at N.Smith Gallery, Surry Hills, 12-28 February 2026
A deity of bureaucracy and literature ignores his smartphone, choosing instead to gleefully sketch the heavens above him. (Yes, he wears a pass around his neck. I couldn’t resist nodding to the public service.)
A horse - that is, a way to get where you are going faster - rests peacefully as humans go about some humble pursuits: growing plants, setting up an easel, playing music, doing puzzles or mathematics. Joy is in everyday efforts, the flow state, writing, sketching, growing, playing, walking. And not in shortcuts.
Getting the rusty wheels off a weathered skateboard and turning it into an essentially absurd object - an imitation of blue-and-white porcelain, was absolutely an endeavour in which there was much joy.
Installation view of Between Earth and Moon.
Photography: Supplied by N.Smith Gallery
MERCY - 2024
Acrylic paint on a used skateboard
Exhibited at Between Earth and Moon at N.Smith Gallery, Surry Hills, 12-28 February 2026
Having seen an act of gentle kindness extended towards a creature Kafka would have called "a monstrous vermin", I was inspired to reference Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, co-existing with a Madagascan hissing cockroach. Such an insect should not be killed for the crime of being small; no creature should. In keeping with my sustainability-focused art practice, my canvas is an unwanted skateboard, to show mercy to the planet itself. I like to rethink to repurpose - a battle-scarred skateboard deck is full of the energy of its previous life when it was in motion. It is more beautiful - and more merciful - to adopt an 'anything is a canvas' mindset.
LOOK CLOSER- 2024
Acrylic paint on wooden offcut, framed in restored moulded plastic
Sold
Exhibited at 2024 Sydney Royal Easter Show
This miniature painting draws inspiration from the lover’s eye jewellery of Victorian England. It is influenced by ornate Gothic decorating styles – both in its framing and in its slightly unsettling effect. It is made entirely out of unwanted materials – a small wooden offcut and a broken frame that was painstakingly resprayed and restored.
THE NEOCLASSICAL SERIES - 2024
Top Row: STILL HERE, IMPERFECT and STRENGTH
Second Row: BLAMELESS and STOIC
Mixed media on cradled wood panels
All Sold
Exhibited at ONWARD, the Wet Paint Collective’s March 2024 show at Art Gallery on Darling
This series nods to the enduring beauty of classical sculpture, rendered with a modernist sensibility with structured planes to carve out a three-dimensional effect while placing them tone-on-tone on a solid-coloured background. The series is about feminine archetypes and how we can find their traits within ourselves.
The five paintings in the series are:
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STILL HERE, featuring Diana the Huntress, who represents perseverance and self-reliance.
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IMPERFECT, featuring a Naiad, a kind of water nymph. The text and title refer to the perfect imperfections that live within us all, even those who meet beauty standards.
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STRENGTH, featuring Hebe, the goddess of eternal youth. The title and text refer to the strength I see in femininity.
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STOIC, featuring Saint Margaret, who defeated a dragon that tried to consume her and is the patron saint of childbirth. We must all defeat the dragons that try to consume us.
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BLAMELESS, featuring Eve. The text and title refer to how much the world loves to blame women for all sorts of things. but curiousity and defiance are not sins.
XIII CHANGE IS COMING - 2023
Acrylic paint on wooden board
Available
Winner - Professional 2D Works - Conflux Art Exhibition 2024
Exhibited at Conflux 18, Canberra, 5-7 October 2024
Exhibited at:
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BLEND, the Wet Paint Collective’s August 2023 show at the Balmain Watch House
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ONWARD, the Wet Paint Collective’s March 2024 show at Art Gallery on Darling
I'm a Chinese-Thai Australian and have drawn inspiration from my cultural background. Krasue are a type of terrifying Thai ghost. My Krasue character surges out of the bounds of a tarot card – XXIII indicating Death, which is often interpreted as a harbinger of change, rather than the actual grave. Though formidable, my character is a protector who can chase away your other fears. Death is usually depicted in the Rider-Waite Tarot as riding a horse – my ghost wraps around a horse’s skull.
HELL MONEY - 2023
Acrylic paint and wood varnish on plywood box lid
Available
Finalist - Biblio Art Prize 2023
Exhibited at Blarney Books and Art, Port Fairy, 9 December 2023 to end of summer 2024
This piece responds to the Australian novel All That's Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien. Its surrealistic style nods to the nightmare state the heroine Ky Tran finds herself in after her teenage brother, Denny, is shot dead in a Cabramatta restaurant. Ky's mother burns 'hell money' for her son, and also paper 'servants' because Denny died so young that she thinks he won't be able to take care of himself in the afterlife. Two coffin nails pin the hell money into place and the piece is aged because the story is set in 1996. Migrant families are famously frugal so this piece is painted on a salvaged plywood box lid that the artist stained with old, dark Estapol - perhaps the only way a family like the Trans could have the type of rich dark wood that was popular in the '90s.
