Australian Women Artists

Richard Graham
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  • Visual Arts
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Australian women artists have been (and continue to be) underrepresented and undervalued in this country despite the stunning artistic works that have been produced since the mid nineteenth century.  This podcast will shine a light on those artists and their spectacular art works. I'll be talking to the artists themselves, both established and emerging, as well as experts on Australian women artists in history. 

  1. 14h ago

    Tonee Messiah

    Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 80 Tonee Messiah   I think it would be fair to say that Tonee Messiah’s work asks questions of you.    It asks that you stand in front and notice how you feel. Her paintings have been described by her as living in the landscape of the mind.    Tonee Messiah was born in Israel and spent her childhood moving between a kibbutz and coastal Australia, finally settling in Sydney at eleven.    That experience of perpetual transition — of never quite arriving — became the foundation of one of the most quietly original painting practices in the country.    She has a bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours from Sydney College of the Arts and a Masters of Fine Art from UNSW. Her work has entered the collections of Artbank and the Monash University Museum of Art, she collaborated with fashion label Gorman in 2022, and that same year won the Waverley Art Prize. She teaches painting at UNSW Art and Design and the National Art School.   Tonee is represented by @nicholasthompsongallery Images 1. TM 2. A Fabricated Reflection, 2025 oil on poly cotton 122 x102 3. Essential Sensitivities, 2025, oil on poly cotton 102 x 76 4. Constructive Beliefs, 2025 oil on poly cotton 102 x 76 5. Slight Reposition on a Soft Decision, 2025 oil on poly cotton 122 x 107

  2. Jul 14

    Leah Thiessen

    Australian Women Artists The podcast Ep 79 Leah Thiessen    Leah Thiessen is a painter whose work is deeply shaped by place, memory, and the living energy of the landscape around her.  Leah has spent close to two decades turning a very special place in Northern NSW into one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary Australian painting.  But she didn't start there. She began her creative life in fashion design, before retraining through a fine arts diploma, and, much later, a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Southern Cross University.  In 2008 Leah left Sydney's Northern Beaches for the Northern Rivers region, and it was there that her real subject found her.  Her practice is both intuitive and deeply observant. Working through mark-making, scraping back, and layers of paint, Leah builds surfaces that feel alive with movement and feeling. Her paintings seem to capture the spirit of a place. She's now represented by Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne, Despard Gallery in Hobart, and Lethbridge Gallery in Brisbane, with solo shows including Broadwater, Biome, and her most recent exhibition, Rustling Canopy. She's been twice named in the Top 100 Collectable Artists. ‘The course of painting is a primal impulse to mark. It is a physical and emotional experience. I paint in an expressive and gestural way capturing the force and energy of a place. I create a visceral experience through the use of mark making and the application of paint. My paintings are process driven and it is only through the act of painting over, scraping back and drawing into, that my work is resolved.’   Head to the link in my bio to hear the episode or search Australian Women Artists wherever you get your podcasts.  Leah is represented by @flinderslanegallery, @despardgallery, @lethbridgegallery   Images of Leah's work to follow in the next post...

  3. Jul 7

    Evie Adasal

    Australian Women Artists  The podcast   Ep. 78 Evie Adasal Evie Adasal is an artist whose practice has evolved — from photography and film through to painting, from direct landscape observation toward a more conceptually layered engagement with the environment.   She brings an unusually layered visual intelligence to her painting practice. Her work is rooted in abstraction, drawn from the cultivated landscapes of public gardens and urban green spaces, and built through a process of slow, meditative looking and careful, beautiful layering of colour.  She continues to push the boundaries of how landscapes can be interpreted through abstraction.   Evie’s work ‘navigates the delicate balance between order and spontaneity, restraint and vibrancy. Her palette reflects this tension, as she moves between subtlety and intensity, bringing together elements that are both harmonious and disruptive’.  For the past three years, she has also been awarded a number of shortlistings, including in prestigious national prizes such as the National Emerging Art Prize, Fisher’s Ghost Award, Hawkesbury Art Prize and the Georges River Art Prize, while winning the Anthea Polson Gallery Award at the Paddington Art Prize in 2023 and she’s very recently had a successful exhibition at Olsen Gallery in Sydney.     Evie is represented by Olsen Gallery, Sydney (@olsen_gallery) and can be seen from Sept 26 at @sydneycontemporary     For some available works copy and paste link below into your browser:  https://www.olsengallery.com/exhibition/evie-adasal/     Images 1.   EA by Brett East 2.   I never promised you a Rose Garden, 2024, 180 x 150 (all paintings on carousel are synthetic polymer on poly cotton) 3.   D-XI, 2026, 120 x 130 4.   D-I, 2026, 120 x 130 5.   D-X, 2026, 130 x 140 6.   D-XV, 2026, 60 x 60

  4. Jun 30

    Dani McKenzie

    Australian Women Artists  The podcast   Ep 77 Dani McKenzie    Dani McKenzie’s story begins, unusually, not in an art school studio but in a bedroom — where, after a formative trip through Europe and a chance encounter with the work of Belgian painter Michaël Borremans, she spent six months teaching herself to paint.  That instinct and passion carried her into the National Art School in Sydney, where she completed both her undergraduate and Master of Fine Art degrees, and where her enduring fascination with photography — memory, privacy, and the lives of strangers — first took shape. Early in her career, Dani worked from found photographs, creating imaginative worlds conjured from those images. But it was the ubiquitous disruptions of 2020 that changed everything. Forced to slow down, she began walking her own neighbourhood in inner-Melbourne, photographing it at night, and turning her lens — quite literally — on her own life and surroundings.  The results are a stunning body of work. Paintings of glowing windows, quiet streets, and private moments caught in public space, executed with a photographic precision that somehow still feels deeply human. Dani is represented by PIERMARQ Gallery, Sydney, MARS Gallery, Melbourne and Long Story Short Gallery (Los Angeles, Paris, New York) and has held solo exhibitions in Paris, Los Angeles, Sydney and Melbourne. Dani mentions being influenced by Clarice Beckett. You could copy and paste this link into your browser to hear a conversation I had with Jennifer Higgie on Clarice: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/australian-women-artists/id1794012822?i=1000695950466 Head to the link in my bio to have a listen to our conversation. Alternatively, search Australian Women Artists wherever you find your podcasts.    Images 1.   DM image supplied by artist 2.   Waiting For You, 2022, oil & acrylic on linen  3.   Waiting for Gelato, 2021, oil on masonite  4.   That Little Italian Place on the Corner, 2022, oil & acrylic on linen  5.   Room With a View, 2023 oil & acrylic on linen  6.   Closing Time I, 2023, oil & acrylic on board  7.   Date Night, 2024, oil & acrylic on linen  8.   The Final Hour, 2025, oil & acrylic on linen

  5. Jun 23

    Kate Shaw

    Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 76 Kate Shaw     Kate Shaw is an award-winning Australian artist who spends her time working and living between Melbourne and the US, having exhibited in Australia for over 20 years and internationally for over 10 years.   Through her luminous landscapes, Kate has created an artistic world that is quite breathtaking, but also quite unsettling. Over that career, it would be fair to say she has fundamentally reinterpreted how we perceive the natural world.   Her practice began to be recognized not just for its innovative methodology, but for its ecological statements.   Kate has held solo exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, London, Hong Kong and throughout Australia. She has also been part of group exhibitions in many other countries.   ‘Kate has become a compelling voice in contemporary painting, known for her immersive, surreal landscapes that probe our relationship with the natural world. Shaw’s richly layered works — created through ‘paint pours’, resin, and reflective surfaces — evoke geological and atmospheric phenomena while inviting contemplation on ecological fragility, climate change, and the psychological experience of nature.’ Olsen Gallery     To hear our conversation head to the link in my bio or search Australian Women Artists wherever you find your podcasts.    Kate is represented by Olsen Gallery, Sydney (@olsen_gallery)   For more info on Kate: www.kateshaw.org     Images:   1.   KS by Belle Stewart 2.   Divine Matrix 2026 acrylic & resin on board 120 diam 3.   89 Seconds to Midnight 2025 acrylic on board 120 diam 4.   Aurora 2016 acrylic and resin on board 120 diam 5.   Carbon Entanglement 2026 acrylic and resin 60 x 50

  6. Jun 16

    Lucy Culliton

    Australian Women Artists The podcast Ep 75 Lucy Culliton     Lucy Culliton is a gem.  It was such an enjoyable conversation – she always has interesting stories, and I was just lucky enough to be sitting on the other side of the table.  It becomes quite apparent that Lucy finds a portrait in everything she looks at — a cactus spine, a prize rooster, a knitted doll, a greyhound asleep in the afternoon light. And that’s because she paints with an intimacy that seems to breathe life into those everyday scenes and objects? Lucy Culliton lives and works on a property at the edge of Bibbenluke in the Snowy Monaro. There she has created a beautiful garden, and she also shares the property with cows, sheep, goats, horses, pigeons, ducks and many rescued greyhounds. The farm is not a backdrop to the work. It is the work. Lucy studied at the National Art School, graduating in 1996, and has spent three decades building one of the most beloved and distinctive bodies of work in Australian painting. She is a multiple Archibald, Wynne and Sulman finalist, and this year won the Sir John Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Her paintings make you slow down. They make you look harder. And they make the ordinary world feel, somehow, like more than enough. I decided within seconds of starting this conversation that, for listeners to get the full picture, it would best to just let it roll. No editing. It is what it is with Lucy. And aren’t we all the luckier for that.  Lucy is represented by @kingstreetgallery in Sydney and @janmurphygallery in Brisbane Her exhibition, Grasses, Tussocks & Sedges is at King St till 4 July   Head to my bio for a link to the podcast episode or search for Australian Women Artists wherever you find your podcasts.   Images 1.   LC via Painted River Project 2.   Bibbenluke Spring 2025 oil on canvas 122 x 99 3.   Top Swamp II 2023 oil on canvas 199 x 122 4.   Toolah, artist assist and and model oil on canvas 140 x140 (winner Sulman Prize 2026) 5.   View From The Pavillion Gunningrah 2026 oil on canvas 184 x 183 6.   Love lies bleeding 2017 oil on canvas 244 x 183

  7. Jun 9

    Rachel Milne

    Australian Women Artists   The podcast   Ep 74 Rachel Milne   Rachel Milne is a Newcastle-based painter whose work turns everyday interiors, objects, and moments into beautifully compelling paintings.   Rachel grew up in Cambridge, trained in Cardiff, and built an early career in Britain serious enough to earn her membership of the Royal West of England Academy.   Then, in 2013, she packed up and moved to the other side of the world — to Newcastle, New South Wales — and something shifted.   She is a painter of interiors. Of unmade beds and cluttered studios, of hallways and mirrors, of spaces that hold the shape of the people who inhabit them.   She works in oil, from life, often in a single sitting — because she believes the camera makes too many decisions on her behalf.   She has been a finalist in numerous significant awards including the Wynne Prize and Portia Geach and has won the Evelyn Chapman Award, Muswellbrook Art Prize and the Vincent Prize. More recently she has spent time as artist-in-residence at the Liddell Power Station — finding beauty in a building the world was busy demolishing.  And who could have guessed this started from painting backgrounds for Wallace and Gromit.    Head to the link in my bio to have a listen to our conversation.   Rachel’s latest exhibition: Newcastle, High is on at King Street Gallery on William (Sydney) till 4 July 2026.   For more info and examples of her work, head to www.rachelmilneartist.com.au   Rachel is represented in Sydney by King Street Gallery on William (@kingstreetgallery) and Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne (@sophiegannongallery)     Images 1.   RM by David Griffen 2.   The Stage, Victoria Theatre 2021 160 x 120 3.   Nest, 2022 oil on board (winner Muswellbrook Painting Prize) 4.   Studio Haefligers 2016 50 x 80 (Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Collection) 5.   View From The Stage, Victoria Theatre, 2021 80 x 100 6.   Town Hall 2026 60 x 80

  8. Jun 2

    Kirtika Kain

    Australian Women Artists  The podcast  Ep 73 Kirtika Kain   Kirtika Kain was born in New Delhi, India and raised on Sydney's Northern Beaches, and is making some of the most viscerally powerful art in the country right now.  Kirtika is a printmaker, a painter, and an alchemist. Her works often depict the overlooked. One of the extraordinary ways she does that is by taking materials such as pigments, wax, sindoor, human hair, charcoal, gold and tar and transforming them into works that carry centuries of inherited memory.  Her practice is a reckoning with identity, and what might be termed the silences passed down through generations. But it’s more than that. It's also an act of celebration and the grandeur of a culture that has never been properly archived.  She has shown at the Biennale of Sydney, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, and in galleries across Australia and Europe.  Head to the link in my bio to hear our conversation.    Kirtika (@kirtika.kain) is represented by Roslyn Oxley9 (@roslynoxley9)   Images 1.   KK in her studio at Parramatta Artists’ Studios, by Garry Trinh 2.   Chronicles, Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025-26 3.   Mimetics, Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2025-26 4.   2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art 5.   Stone Idols, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery 2021

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About

Australian women artists have been (and continue to be) underrepresented and undervalued in this country despite the stunning artistic works that have been produced since the mid nineteenth century.  This podcast will shine a light on those artists and their spectacular art works. I'll be talking to the artists themselves, both established and emerging, as well as experts on Australian women artists in history. 

Information

  • Creator
    Richard Graham
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    81
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Australian Women Artists
  • Show Website
    Australian Women Artists

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