SALLY ANDERSON with Noel McKenna, James Drinkwater, Lottie Consalvo, Jake Walker, Nadine Christensen, Kyle Murrell, Lance James, Robyn Sweaney, Violet Frisby, Patrick Hartigan, Jenny van Ratingen, Rosemary Lee 'HOUSES AND HORSES FOR DAD'

Finalists and winners of the Abbotsleigh Grace Cossington Smith art award have been selected this year by judges Barry Keldoulis, Artbank Client Services Coordinator, and Anna Davis, curator at Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

Sally Anderson's Balancing jug, Augie's 1S underwater painting, Haberfield window, horse for dad 2026 (acrylic on polyester, 168 x 137 cm) has been selected as a finalist for the award.

Exhibition of Finalists: Saturday 18 July to Saturday 15 August 2026

Opening and awards presentation: Wednesday 22 July 2026 6-8 pm

Read more here.

We’re thrilled to announce James Drinkwater is a finalist in the Sulman Prize 2026 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

‘For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams’ 2026
oil, enamel and charcoal on linen
210 x 260 cm

Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2026
9 May – 16 August 2026
Art Gallery of New South Wales

READ MORE HERE

In 2025, James Drinkwater's work Sunday in Albi has been acquired by the Blanca and Borja Thyssen-Bornemisza collection for the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid.

Sally Anderson presents works in Town Hall Gallery’s latest exhibition, ‘OBJECTIVE’, which brings together a group of seven contemporary Australian artists to reimagine the boundaries of the still life genre. Artists in the exhibition include Pia Murphy, Tony Albert, Nadine Christensen, Adam John Cullen, James McGrath and Louise Paramor.

This ambitious exhibition challenges traditional expectations of the still life genre, presenting painting, video, sculpture and installation works that transform everyday objects into unique experiences. The participating artists each bring a distinctive conceptual and aesthetic approach: familiar items are abstracted, recontextualised and elevated, while subtle narratives encourage viewers to connect personally with the inanimate.

Several artists explore the interplay between the natural and the artificial, using form, colour and humour to reframe how ordinary scenes are perceived. Others embrace bold experimentation, offering playful and sometimes whimsical reinterpretations that refresh the still life tradition for contemporary audiences.

Within this diverse group, Sally contributes works that balance representation and abstraction, adding intimate reflections on memory and lived experience. Collectively, the exhibition presents a vibrant cross-section of current artistic practice, demonstrating how the still life genre continues to evolve.

‘OBJECTIVE’ is on view at Town Hall Gallery, Boroondara, until 24 January 2026.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGES:
Installation images of 'OBJECTIVE' at Town Hall Gallery, courtesy Boroondara and Christian Capurro.

Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson is a celebration of important still life paintings by Margaret Olley (1923–2011) together with new work by Gadigal/Sydney-based artist Sally Anderson.

During her 2025 residency at the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio, Sally embarked on a new body of work that responds not only to Margaret Olley’s remarkable still life paintings featured in Ode: Margaret Olley and Sally Anderson, but also to selected objects from the re-creation of Olley’s home studio. Interweaving deeply personal experiences and themes of domesticity, care, maternity, and mortality within her work, Anderson invites us to reconsider Olley’s still life paintings in a new light.

A Tweed Regional Gallery initiative. The Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio is supported by benefactor Mr. Tim Fairfax AC via the Tweed Regional Gallery Foundation Ltd.

“Olley’s still life paintings feature and appear as postcards or portals within mine, just as Cézanne, Matisse, and Manet (to name a few) appear within hers. I’ve deliberately arranged objects borrowed from Olley’s reconstructed home–studio alongside personally significant items within my compositions to give them new context and meaning. I think a lot about arranging—how we arrange thoughts, words, time, memories, clothes, households, feelings, gardens, furniture, objects, colour—and how rearranging the order of things ultimately shifts meaning, revealing new truths, narratives, and histories.”

The Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio is a live-in studio supporting artists from across Australia, encouraging connection between artist, community, and place.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

SALLY ANDERSON
Study of MO’s still life in green 1947 with a banksia for dad, GM orchid and PP Bathers postcard 2025
acrylic on polycotton
137 × 153 cm

We are delighted to share that James Drinkwater is featured in the newly published Artists by Artists (Thames & Hudson), an ambitious project by Michelle Grey and Susan Armstrong. The book brings together fifty of Australia’s leading artists, thoughtfully paired to create portraits of one another.

Drinkwater was partnered with celebrated artist Ken Done, offering a unique exchange of perspectives and practices. The publication provides a rare insight into the creative processes, inspirations, and personal reflections that shape each artist’s work, while also highlighting the connections that emerge when artists turn their gaze towards each other.

Through striking imagery and candid storytelling, Artists by Artists presents an intimate and dynamic portrait of Australia’s contemporary art community, with Drinkwater’s contribution a highlight of this landmark project.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
James Drinkwater and Ken Done, courtesy Thames and Hudson

We are delighted to share that Sally Anderson's painting ‘Middle Brother Mother Mountain Fountain (PP Nude in a Garden, BT Mother and Child)’ is a finalist in the Calleen Art Award.

The Calleen Art Award is an annual acquisitive painting prize and exhibition. It presents the best of contemporary Australian painting in any style, theme or subject. Since its inception in 1977 by Cowra Art Patron Mrs Patricia Fagan OAM the Calleen Art Award has celebrated contemporary art practices and fostered originality, creativity and excellence in the visual arts.The winning artwork will join the Calleen Collection at Cowra Regional Art Gallery collection.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
‘Middle Brother Mother Mountain Fountain (PP Nude in a Garden, BT Mother and Child)’ 2024
acrylic on polycotton
183 x 197cm

We are thrilled to announce that Sally Anderson’s work is a finalists in the Gosford Art Prize, with her work ‘November bells, BT mother, birth banksias, PP nude in a garden’.

The Gosford Art Prize will be presented at Gosford Regional Gallery and is open to all artists across Australia. It attracts entries in all mediums from traditional forms to new media artworks. The 2025 iteration is the 26th time the prize will be presented at Gosford Regional Gallery, and it continues to grow in size and popularity every year.

The finalists exhibition is on until 9 November, 2025 at Gosford Regional Gallery.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
‘November bells, BT mother, birth banksias, PP nude in a garden’ 2024
acrylic on polycotton,
183 x 198 cm

James Drinkwater stands out as a promising talent within the Australian art scene. Known for his dynamic paintings, Drinkwater brings an energetic approach to contemporary art that is both refreshing and impactful. His works are recognised for their vibrant colours and distinctive textures, adding layers of emotional depth and inviting viewers to explore their own responses to each piece. As a significant figure among emerging Australian artists, Drinkwater's art evokes curiosity and conversation.

In presenting his unique style, Drinkwater combines a rich palette with expressive brushwork. This combination results in paintings that feel alive with emotion, capturing stories and experiences through abstraction. His art reflects an innovative vision, turning everyday moments into powerful visual narratives. What makes his paintings especially accessible is how deeply personal yet relatable they are. He doesn’t complicate his art with technical distance. Instead, each piece draws people in, inviting interpretation and emotional response.

The Role of Colour in James Drinkwater's Work

Colour plays a central role in James Drinkwater’s artistic language. He uses it not just to fill space but to stir emotion, set the tone and ask questions. Rather than relying on defined forms, Drinkwater lets colour drive the response. His palette often feels spontaneous but is deeply considered. The placement and intensity of each hue are deliberate, sometimes loud and other times subtle, depending on the emotional pull of the piece.

Two of his paintings that showcase this are:

- A Burst of Joy: Bursting with oranges and yellows set against dusky blues, this painting conveys both high energy and quiet reflection. It feels like capturing a memory that’s bright but tinged with nostalgia.

- Melancholic Reflections: Muted greys and pale greens dominate here, creating a mood that’s softer and more introspective. It doesn’t try to explain itself but feels open to personal interpretation.

Through these works and others, Drinkwater demonstrates a strong belief in colour as emotion. He has a way of using hue and saturation to shape the mood without ever needing to define a subject clearly. That opens the door for the viewer to connect more freely. How they see the painting may depend on how they’re feeling in the moment, which is part of what gives his art depth and staying power.

Exploring Texture in Drinkwater's Paintings

James Drinkwater is known for the physicality in his work, and nothing captures that better than the textures he creates on canvas. Texture isn’t just a feature — it’s part of the emotion. His approach is tactile and highly instinctive, where movement in the application becomes part of the story. There’s no effort to hide brushstrokes, tool marks or layering. Instead, they’re central to the overall effect.

Drinkwater works quickly and with purpose, using a variety of tools like palette knives, brushes, rags and sometimes even his hands. He scrapes, builds, removes and re-applies. Paint goes on thick in one place, thin in another. And he often leaves parts of previous gestures visible under the new ones, like memories pushing up through the surface.

Here are five common ways texture shows up in his work:

1. Heavy build-ups of paint that rise off the canvas

2. Bold brushstrokes that carry the rhythm of his movement

3. Scraped-back sections that reveal earlier versions underneath

4. Contrasting materials such as charcoal or pencil for added grit

5. Abrupt changes in surface treatment to create tension

These textures do more than add visual interest. They give each work a kind of weight and presence that’s hard to ignore. It feels like you’re seeing the process as much as the result. That sense of honesty cuts through and helps viewers feel connected to the painting in a physical, hands-on way.

Influences and Inspirations

Behind Drinkwater’s creative style is a mix of personal history, Australian heritage and influences from other artists. He has spoken openly about the impact that growing up near the coast has had on his work. There’s an organic, weathered quality to many of his paintings that hints at salt air, open space and the passing of time. These aren’t literal landscapes, but the energy of place is there in the layered, shifting colours and rough surfaces.

He’s also been shaped by conversations with Australian modernists such as Albert Tucker or Sidney Nolan, whose work broke away from detailed representation to embrace mood, suggestion and national identity. Drinkwater builds on these ideas in his own way, adding intensity and immediacy through texture and scale.

Music and family life also play a role. Many of his works are inspired by moments of personal meaning — a memory, an emotion, or a fleeting idea. One painting combines aggressive reds and muted blacks to reflect what he once described as a “moment of deep personal conflict.” The raw arrangement of colours and textures creates a clash that’s hard to turn away from. You might not know exactly what it’s about, but you can feel the tension.

This blending of outside influence and internal experience makes his work feel grounded, but always driven by emotion. It reflects an artist who is willing to absorb and respond to the world around him without mimicking it.

The Impact of James Drinkwater on Contemporary Australian Art

James Drinkwater is a vital voice in contemporary Australian art. He's part of a growing group of artists who are rejecting polished realism in favour of expression, gesture and process. Rather than telling viewers what to see, he encourages them to explore what they feel.

His ability to fuse bold emotion with the memory of place gives his work an edge — something uniquely Australian, yet open to global conversations. Drinkwater’s paintings have featured alongside works by respected peers such as Sally Anderson, Vipoo Srivilasa, Miranda Skoczek, Jake Walker, Joanna Logue and Ross Laurie. Together, they represent a rich thread in modern Australian painting that values experimentation and emotional honesty.

Beyond his art, Drinkwater’s influence is felt in how he talks about making art. He’s open about the mess, the doubt, the breakthroughs — and that’s inspiring to emerging artists who might feel pressure to always be polished or conceptual. His approach suggests that real meaning can come from process, from risk, from pushing material around until it says something back to you.

In interviews and exhibitions alike, it becomes clear that he's not trying to build an image — he's trying to build a connection. That’s helped reshape how contemporary painting is seen in Australia today.

Experience James Drinkwater at Edwina Corlette Gallery

If you really want to understand James Drinkwater's work, it’s worth seeing it in person. Photos don’t do justice to the layers, the texture and the energy that comes through when you're standing in front of one of his paintings. The surfaces tell as much of a story as the image itself.

At Edwina Corlette Gallery in Brisbane, visitors have the chance to engage with Drinkwater’s art up close. Regular exhibitions feature his latest pieces either solo or alongside other contemporary Australian artists. These shows create a curated conversation between artists, allowing differences and similarities to play off each other and giving audiences a richer understanding of the broader art scene.

Whether an exhibition is focused solely on his work or thematic across multiple artists, Drinkwater’s paintings tend to stand out. Not because they’re louder, but because they feel true. They invite a longer look, or maybe even a second visit.

His paintings don’t just hang on the wall. They hold attention. They ask to be considered, not explained. And they offer something different each time you return to them. That’s part of what makes the experience so engaging for visitors and collectors alike. James Drinkwater’s work doesn’t fade into the background — it stays with you.

To explore more work that captures raw emotion through movement, colour and layered form, take a closer look at how James Drinkwater brings his creative process to life at Edwina Corlette.

We are delighted to share that James Drinkwater has been named a finalist in the 2025 Mosman Art Prize with his work Piano Nobile (reprise 1).

Now in its 78th year, the Mossman Art Prize is Australia’s longest running and most prestigious municipal painting award, providing a defining platform for contemporary Australian painting. The finalists’ exhibition is on view until 2 November.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Piano Nobile (reprise 1) 2025
oil on linen

We are delighted to announce Sally Anderson’s inclusion in TENDER at Ngununggula in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.

TENDER is an annual exhibition committed to showcasing the work of Australian women artists.

'Tender' within this exhibition refers to the body, our gestures, and the way we feel or express ourselves. We impart the term on places, objects or surfaces to describe how they arouse our senses or how an object yields under pressure; it softens, loses shape, and gives way. This term has rich and varied meanings, and the aim of this exhibition is to explore its significance beyond a gender lens.

Sally Anderson’s work asks how one can hold households, partners, children, paintings, parents, and the self all at once. It reflects the ways motherhood, domesticity, and creative practice become reciprocal and inevitably entangled, each influencing and permeating the other. The work deliberately moves between abstraction and representation, using still-life and landscape motifs as symbols of containment and care.

The exhibition is current at Ngununggula 12 April - 15 June 2025

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Self and Still life (shared garden future nurture) 2024
acrylic on polycotton
183 x 165 cm

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalists in the 2024 Portia Geach Memorial Award with her work ‘Self and still life (shared garden, future nurture)'.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established in 1965 to be annually presented to an Australian female artist. Portia Geach was an iconic figure in the Australian arts community, acclaimed for her art and media presence, and as such the award was created in her honour. The award is specifically for the best portrait painted from the life of someone well renowned in art, academia, or science.

Finalists exhibition will be held at the S.H Ervin Gallery, 25 October – 15 December 2024, Sydney

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Sally Anderson
Self and still life (shared garden, future nurture) 2024
acrylic on polycotton
183 x 198cm

James Drinkwater has featured in ART-CLE Issue 02, 2024:

Known for his raucous yet meticulously composed paintings, James Drinkwater is one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Yet, the words ‘contemporary’ and ‘artist’ are not necessarily ones Drinkwater would use to describe himself. He prefers the term ‘painter’, and he is a gestural one at that, drawing on influences from the vast legacy of Australian, British, American and French modern art he became obsessed with as a child growing up in Newcastle, New South Wales. Drinkwater says he started drawing and painting incessantly from the age of five, after becoming taken with the small landscape paintings his aunt would work on at her kitchen table.

Drinkwater’s talent was recognised and nurtured early on, not just by his parents and those around him but also by the art world itself. During our conversation, he fields a call from his dad, who wants to come around and see his recent paintings. “It’s never ideal, the time he wants to come,” Drinkwater says after hanging up. “But I’m never going to say no to that, it’s fuel. You talk about fathers not approving of their kids doing art… artists like Clarice Beckett, you know. My dad was there in the garage with me, standing with a ciggy and a chardonnay just going, ‘Oh, bloody brilliant James. Brilliant. Michelle, come look!’

Between the ages of eight and eighteen, he attended Ron Hartree’s now-closed art school in Newcastle and visited exhibitions whenever his parents could take him. He later attended the National Art School in Sydney—only for one year, before getting restless—and then moved to Melbourne, where he met his now-wife, the painter and performance artist Lottie Consalvo. The pair soon moved to Berlin, where they lived for three years before relocating back to Newcastle in search of cheaper studio space and a quieter life.

In 2014, aged thirty, he won the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, which took his family— then-newly expanded to three with the arrival of his first child, Vincenzo—to the Cité des Arts in Paris for three months and a further three travelling. Fast forward to June 2023, almost a decade on, and a survey exhibition at Canberra’s Drill Hall Gallery—James Drinkwater: at mid-career, curated by Terence Maloon—announced without hesitation Drinkwater’s arrival at that often tenuous artistic milestone.

Drinkwater’s paintings are defined by their expressive use of colour. They are rich in matter, working texture and colour into abstract yet familiar figures, landscapes and interiors that speak of his experiences both real and imagined. In subject, his work draws heavily on the intimacy of his family life, the oceanic environment in which he lives, the broader Australian landscape and the people and places with which he interacts in his movements and travels. As was the case for the 20th century painters Drinkwater has so admired, his own exploration of this personal iconography at once allows insight into his subjective experience and offers something of our shared world to dive into.

- Emma Pegrum, ART-CLE

IMAGE:

James Drinkwater, courtesy Nic Gossage

READ MORE HERE

James Drinkwater's new publication 'I Love You More Than Paintings. Works 2008-2024' has been released. Containing a comprehensive survey of James Drinkwater's artworks to date, as well as writings from Louise Martin-Chew, Ineke Dane, and Nicholas Thompson.

“James Drinkwater paintings are physical, muscular, messy - articulating something that Picasso started - blending nameable and unnameable or recognisable imagery with nondescript painted signs, dancing in a frenetic ballet of attack after attack, sometimes confounding sometimes parting the seas of expression to a clear cohesive rhythm where painted cacophony reigns, not over matter but out of matter. Personal, familial, local of somewhere faraway and right around the corner.”

Julian Schnabel

IMAGE:

Cover of 'I Love You More Than Paintings. Works 2008-2024' by James Drinkwater

READ MORE HERE

Delighted to announce that Sally Anderson has been selected as a finalist in the Sir John Sulman Prize with her work ‘Holding a hurricane, quilt curtain carrying the sea’.

How do you hold a hurricane? How do you hold close things that are spiralling out of your control? Can you contain the sea in a quilt? How do we measure domestic, creative and maternal labour? With time? How does one get more time in a day? How do we hold households, partners, children, paintings, parents and ourselves simultaneously? This painting speaks to the ways motherhood, domesticity and creative practice are, for me, reciprocal and ultimately entangled. Each informs and infects the other. This work deliberately dances between abstraction and representation and employs still-life and landscape motifs as symbols of containment and care.

- Sally Anderson, 2024

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Holding a hurricane, quilt curtain carrying the sea 2024
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
182.5 x 198.2 cm

Congratulations Sally Anderson who is a finalist in the 2024 Bayside Painting Prize for her 2024 work ‘Placenta banksia, Bridal Veil Falls view, the sea in me, PB nude quilt tablecloth’. Established in 2015, the Bayside Painting Prize is one of the most generous non-acquisitive painting prizes in Australia. The exhibition draws together a breadth of artists with varied approaches to painting. This allows the Bayside City Council to further develop its collection and promote artists to the Bayside community.

The finalist exhibition will be held at Bayside Gallery from 3 May to 23 June 2024.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Placenta banksia, Bridal Veil Falls view, the sea in me, PB nude quilt tablecloth 2024
acrylic on polycotton
168 x 137 cm

Image courtesy the artist and Jessica Maurer

James Drinkwater is included in the 2023 Salon des Refusés with his painting 'Your world is ever new' (2022).

On view at the S. H. Ervin Gallery, Millers Point, Sydney

IMAGE:
James Drinkwater
'Your world is ever new' 2022
oil on linen
138 x 168 cm

Congratulations to Sally Anderson, who has been announced as a finalist in the Grace Cossington Smith Art Award for her painting 'Nat Silk’s Seatown Still Life, PB Nude Quilt, Bromeliad Washdown'.

The biennial Grace Cossington Smith Art Award is a $20,000 National acquisitive award. The award theme is 'Making Connections' inspired by the work of Abbotsleigh graduate and artist Grace Cossington Smith - renowned for her Modern abstraction paintings of Australia. The finalist exhibition opens 27 January 2024 at the Grace Cossington Smith Gallery, Wahroonga, Sydney.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Nat Silk's Seatown Still Life, PB Nude Quilt, Bromeliad Washdown 2023
acrylic on polycotton
153 x 137 cm

Sally Anderson is featured in the July/August edition of Art Guide Australia.

Motherhood, domesticity, landscape, memory—these are just some of the experiences and memories Sally Anderson has captured in her two-decade painting practice, underpinned by a persistent blue.

The outer edges of Sally Anderson’s paintings reveal multiple layers of canvas, the evidence of past works painted over yet still present deep within. Integral to how Anderson works, this layering connects to ideas of containment and the action of being physically held. “This could refer to a mother carrying her baby, being restricted to the home, a vessel holding flowers, frames, windows or pools,” she says.

- Briony Downes, Art Guide, 2023

IMAGE:

Sally Anderson in her Studio, courtesy Jessica Mauer

READ MORE HERE

James Drinkwater At Mid Career curated by Terence Maloon, Drill Hall Gallery, ANU Canberra

'Early recognised as an exceptional talent, James Drinkwater has never toned-down the intensity and bravura of his approach to painting. His work has mined a vast legacy of modern art – Australian, British, American, French – as if all of it remains relevant, fresh and available to him. Now, on the brink of turning 40, this is the first survey of his prodigious past. While his paintings evoke figures, landscapes and interiors, they are also meticulously composed abstractions, distinctive for their complex and opulent fusion of texture, colour and spatial intrigue.'

Exhibition current from 24 June - 20 August, 2023

IMAGE:

Installation view James Drinkwater 'At Mid Career' curated by Terence Maloon.

We are clumsy now on this southern beach 2016

mixed media on board

140 x 120 cm

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in this year's Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize with her work ‘Sea Town Lawn Roof Song with NO’s Vessel.’

The Ravenswood Australian Women's Art Prize is an annual prize that was launched in 2017 to advance art and opportunity for emerging and established female artists in Australia. It is the highest value professional artist prize for women in Australia.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:

SALLY ANDERSON
Sea Town Lawn Roof Song with NO’s Vessel 2023
acrylic on canvas
115 x 97 cm

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in this year's Muswellbrook Art Prize with her work ‘Lismore Island Roof Song with a Screenshot of Nat Silk’s Seatown’.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Sally Anderson
Lismore Island Roof Song with a Screenshot of Nat Silk’s Seatown 2022
acrylic on polycotton

Sally Anderson has received a glowing review in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Sally Anderson’s Guido 'Holding Folding Moulding' is another stand-out. Ostensibly a portrait of her artist husband holding their child, there’s a metaphysical dimension to the work, with a sculpture on a pedestal, a jug with flowers and a red, flag-like curtain taking up significant space in the composition. The play of curves and fractured planes adds to the mystery of the picture, as we feel we are looking through multiple doorways or windows, projecting a dream-like atmosphere.

- John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald, 2022.

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in the Portia Geach Award at SH Ervin Gallery in Sydney.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established in 1965 to be annually presented to an Australian female artist. Portia Geach was an iconic figure in the Australian arts community, acclaimed for her art and media presence, and as such the award was created in her honour. The award is specifically for the best portrait painted from the life of someone well renowned in art, academia, or science.

The exhibition is open 16 September – 6 November 2022

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Guido holding, folding, moulding 2022
acrylic on polycotton
198 x 153 cm

Blue Island investigates the interplay of colour and memory in relation to individual experience. Paintings draw on hydrangea related respective experience to demonstrate the capacity for colour and object to hold and trigger memory and association. The exhibition seeks to question the reliability of memory and offers a way to authenticate experience through colour. In attempting to realise something perhaps visually impossible to verify within their paintings; mixing colour truthfully and straightforwardly from memory, the artists are challenged to settle on feeling and intuitive correctness rather than absolute truth and certainty.

Using a uniform size canvas, the 14 invited artists were instructed to translate, from their ‘mind’s eye’, the colour they most strongly associate with their experience of hydrangeas. The result is a collection of essentially monochrome surfaces steeped with hidden and concealed recollections of mothers and mother’s mothers, former neighbours and neighbourhoods, marriage, childbirth city front-yards, suburban backyards, households and broken family homes. More visually evident (than the personal histories imbued in the paintings) is the materiality and individually distinctive application of paint to surface. These largely monochrome works give a condensed, and detail like insight into each artist’s painterly signature, almost all of which are instantly recognisable.

- Sally Anderson, 2022

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Lottie Consalvo and James Drinkwater have created a big-hearted, art-filled home in their terrace house by the sea. James’ art practice incorporates painting, sculpture, drawings and wearable textiles. "Since I was a child, making art was the clearest way I could express myself,” he says. His creativity is nourished by “generosity of any kind, whether it be the human spirit or nature itself".

- Elizabeth Wilson, House & Garden Magazine

IMAGE:

James Drinkwater, courtesy Alana Landsberry

READ MORE HERE

Written by Louise Martin-Chew

Sally Anderson has been included in an exhibition and article by The Australian which highlight new Australian art on the market.

It’s this moment of evolution that has inspired The Australian’s Summer Exhibition — a showcase of sculptures, paintings, photographs and works on paper. Beautiful to look at, it’s a celebration of some of the best and brightest artists working today. All 50 pieces have been selected because they signify what’s happening in Australian art and culture right now.

So, what is happening right now? The primary art market in Australia is experiencing a small boom. For obvious reasons, flying to international art fairs is off the cards, and this has led Australian collectors to rediscover a local market packed full of prodigious works by tomorrow’s household names.

It means there’s a renewed focus on Australian stories and more opportunities for emerging artists to have their work seen, as gallerists and buyers look toward home. It’s this time of risk-taking and yes, even optimism that our summer exhibition represents.

- Amy Campbell, The Australian, 2021

READ MORE HERE

Congratulations to Sally Anderson whose upcoming exhibition has been featured in Brisbane Art Guide.

To coincide with her exhibition at Tweed Regional Gallery, Edwina Corlette Gallery is delighted to present a series of new paintings by Sally Anderson. Sally is a past winner of the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and a finalist in this year’s Portia Geach Award for female portraiture, with her painting of Claudia Karvan (below).

Born in Lismore, Anderson began her undergraduate studies in Visual Art at Southern Cross University before transferring to the College of Fine Art in Sydney. A past finalist in the Sunshine Coast Art Prize and the Paddington Art Prize, Anderson was invited to participate in the Association of Icelandic Visual Artists Residency in Reykjavik in 2014. Her work has been acquired by Artbank, the Australian Catholic University and corporate and private clients in Australia and Europe.

- Brisbane Art Guide, 2020

READ MORE HERE

The concept of home has changed in 2020. For a lot of people, home has never been just one static place, and yet in the last few months that stasis has been forced upon us. In the midst of shelter-in-place orders, we’ve been directed to decide on a single location that represents our place in the world and stay there, hoping it keeps us safe.

Reframing the domestic space as a new landscape intrigues artist and new mother Sally Anderson. Her new body of work is entitled Bridal Veil Falls, the Window and the Piano Lesson, and was created almost entirely in lockdown. The pieces will be on display at Edwina Corlette gallery in Brisbane from tomorrow, in an exhibition that explores the fusion between Sally’s subjective experience of parenthood, and the collective endurance of pandemic paralysis.

- Sasha Gattermayr, The Design Files, 2020

READ MORE HERE

To help my son sleep we put on white noise of a small river in Scotland and Llyn Gwynant waves in Wales. The toponomy of Lismore indicates it was named after Isle of Lismore which lies in Loch Linnhe, an arm of the sea, on the West Coast of Scotland. I was born in Lismore early 1990, an experience I hadn’t intimately considered until the birth of my son a couple of years ago. My son was conceived in the Nancy Fairfax Artist in Residence Studio at Tweed Regional Gallery. There’s a pair of hoop pines (aka Richmond River Pines) that dominate the side view from the residency verandah. I often use these trees, along with banksias, within my work to represent the Northern Rivers region, my transition to motherhood and European exploration/invasion of Australia.

The works in 'Arm of the Sea and the Fertile Tree' use landscape metaphor rather than subject. Intimate personal experience and collective experience are translated into paintings, bedspreads, windows, still lifes and stages.

- Sally Anderson, 2020

The exhibition is open from 3 July — 29 November 2020

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Installation image of Sally Anderson's exhibition at Tweed Regional Gallery

Sally Anderson's work 'Claude Swimming' has been selected as a finalist in the Portia Geach Prize for 2020. The painting of Claudia Karvan, actress, producer and writer will be exhibited at the National Trust's S.H. Ervin Gallery.

The Portia Geach Memorial Award was established in 1965 to be annually presented to an Australian female artist. Portia Geach was an iconic figure in the Australian arts community, acclaimed for her art and media presence, and as such the award was created in her honour. The award is specifically for the best portrait painted from the life of someone well renowned in art, academia, or science.

The exhibition will be open in Sydney from 14 August – 20 September 2020.

READ MORE HERE

IMAGE:
Sally Anderson
Claude Swimming, 2020
acrylic on linen
168 x 137cm

My paintings talk of relationship, context and metaphor. They are loaded with autobiographical content, draw on past and present experiences and often arrive in pairs. Recent paintings use abstraction, still life and borrowed landscapes to reference everyday intimate experience held in object and place. They explore the self and use abstraction, landscape and still life as devices to do so.

- Sally Anderson, The Design Files, 2019.

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Sally Anderson's work 'Side of the Road River with Rousseau's Bluebells' has been selected as a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize

Mosman Art Prize was established in 1947, and is Australia's oldest and most prestigious local government art award. The winning artworks join a collection of modern and contemporary Australian art, reflecting developments in Australian art practice since 1947. Artists who have won the Mosman Art Prize include Margaret Olley, Guy Warren, Grace Cossington Smith, Weaver Hawkins, Nancy Borlase, Lloyd Rees, Elisabeth Cummings, Adam Cullen, Michael Zavros and Natasha Walsh.

The exhibition is open until 27 October 2019 at Mosman Art Gallery.

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IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Side of the Road River with Rousseau's Bluebells 2019
acrylic on linen

We are delighted to see works by Sally Anderson, Belem Lett, Lucy O'Doherty, and Amber Wallis in the new exhibition 'The Whiteley at 20: Twenty Years of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship', as previous finalists of the award.

Established by Ms Beryl Whiteley in 1999 in memory of her son, the 'Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship' provides young painters with the opportunity to travel through Europe to develop their artistic practice. Since its inception, 20 young painters have followed in the titular artist's footsteps.

The exhibition features works by Sally Anderson, Alice Byrne, Mitch Cairns, James Drinkwater, Petrea Fellow, Becky Gibson, Nathan Hawkes, Alan Jones, Nicole Kelly, Belem Lett, Lucy O’Doherty, Wayde Owen, Timothy Phillips, Tom Polo, Ben Quilty, Karlee Rawkins, Samuel Wade, Amber Wallis, Natasha Walsh, and Marcus Wills, alongside the four paintings that won Brett Whiteley the Italian Government Travelling Scholarship.

The exhibition presents not only the works that won the scholarship, but features works from each artist's residency at the Cite Internationale des Art, Paris and recent work.

The exhibition is open from 22 March - 5 May 2019 at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in Sydney.

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IMAGES:
1/ Previous winners of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship attending the opening of 'The Whiteley at 20: Twenty Years of the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship'
2/ Brett Whiteley

Sally Anderson's work ‘Guy’s Painting of Wollumbin on my Wollumbin’ has been acquired by Tweed Regional Gallery. In 2017 Sally was an artist in residence at the Nancy Fairfax Artist Residency through the Tweed Regional Gallery and throughout her life, has had strong connections to the region.

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IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Guy's Painting of Wollumbin on my Wollumbin 2018
acrylic on linen
140 x 122 cm

Congratulations to Sally Anderson who is a finalist in the Paddington Art Prize 2018.

The Paddington Art Prize is a $30,000 National acquisitive prize, awarded annually. The prize is specific to paintings inspired by the Australian landscape, as the imagery is integral to the tradition of Australia painting and is an enduring motif within contemporary art, shaping national identity.

This work uses ‘borrowed landscapes’ to look at ways we experience the Australian landscape from the comfort of our homes. It uses landscape as a device to demonstrate a shift in the way we experience landscape.

- Sally Anderson


IMAGE:

Sally Anderson
Sharing Thirroul (Paul Ryan's Post Of Thirroul With Curtain) 2017
acrylic on linen
140 x 124 cm

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Sally Anderson's recent exhibition 'Self Storage and the Really Real' is featured in the January edition of the Art Almanac.

'Self Storage and the Really Real’ looks at ways we authenticate experience and store memory in object and place’, says artist Sally Anderson whose abstract compositions brim with clear references to past experiences; from the hydrangeas at her childhood home to shells from the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, and Norfolk Pines from recent Instagram posts to landscapes from past and present relationships. These works are a visual archive giving permanence to intangible memories and making them, as the title implies, ‘really real’.

- Art Almanac

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IMAGE:
SALLY ANDERSON
Tosha Falls as Curtains with Deegan Drive or LJs Mums Hydrangeas 2018
acrylic on linen
122 x 122 cm

Sally Anderson has been awarded the Brett Whiteley Travelling Arts Scholarship for 2017.

The prize is $40,000 and a three month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, administered by the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

The annual Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship is open to Australian artists aged between 20 and 30. It was created from an endowment left by Beryl Whiteley, who witnessed the profound effect that international travel had on her son Brett Whiteley, as a result of him winning the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship at the age of 20.

The exhibition will open 13 October – 19 November 2017 at Brett Whiteley Studio, 2 Raper Street, Surry Hills NSW 2010.

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Sally Anderson has been selected as a finalist in Newcastle Art Gallery's Kilgour Prize.

In 1987 artist Jack Kilgour bequeathed funds for the creation of a figurative and portrait art competition to be run in perpetuity at Newcastle Art Gallery. Today the Kilgour Prize is one of Australia's major art prizes and awards $50,000 for the most outstanding work of art as determined by a panel of three judges, and $5,000 for the People's Choice Award, as determined by votes from the public.

The Kilgour Prize will be on display 5 August - 15 October 2017.

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Iconic Australian blog The Design Files visited Sally Anderson in her studio recently, to see how things were progressing in the lead up to her first solo exhibition.

Working predominantly with a muted colour palette, the artist will often add an unexpected contrast, like a brush of bright magenta. ‘For me, working with colour is very intuitive; I might spend weeks working with dusky colours, only to come in one day needing to mix a cyan blue,

The paintings are an ongoing process of adding layers and marks. Sometimes Sally will paint over a work in her studio that she’d thought she was long done with. ‘My partner once said that my pieces are a bit like découpage… with individual snippets and cut-outs layered heavily onto a surface,’ she says. ‘My mum has always loved crafts and used to actually découpage the furniture in our house… maybe that’s unknowingly made an impression on me!’

- Sally Tabart, The Design Files, 2021

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