.png)
Artwork Description:
A man sits at a table where bananas, driftwood, and smoke mark memory and time. Blending still life and portraiture, it captures, gestures, silences, and the weight of simple moments through colour, strong form, and chiaroscuro to capture presence.
Category: Paintings (Oils & Acrylics)
Artwork Medium: Oil on Canvas
122h x 82w x 5d (cm)
Artist Bio:
I am a Western Australian contemporary artist working primarily in oil on canvas. Based in regional Western Australia, my practice explores memory, presence and the quiet emotional weight carried within everyday moments.
My recent work centres on intimate, close-framed figurative paintings that explore psychological presence, tension and stillness. Drawing on the dramatic use of light and shadow found in chiaroscuro traditions while embracing a contemporary minimal aesthetic, I create images that examine what it means to remain — to hold a gaze, to stay, and to look closer.
Within my paintings, figures often exist within sparse interiors or expansive skies, creating a quiet yet charged dialogue between body and environment. I frequently draw on elements from the narrative of the spaces around me — the environments I inhabit, the landscapes I move through, and the subtle atmospheres that shape lived experience. These spatial narratives become embedded in the work through symbolic objects, shifting light and carefully composed environments.
Symbolic objects appear not as narrative props but as emotional counterpoints that deepen the atmosphere of the work. Through restrained palettes, bold colour, strong tonal contrast and deliberate cropping, I construct compositions that feel suspended between vulnerability and strength, intimacy and distance.
Working under the name Googie Ann Art, I combine figurative elements with symbolic still life to transform ordinary objects and moments into reflective visual narratives. Much of my work grows from personal memory and lived experience, reflecting on relationships, distance and the subtle tensions held within everyday spaces.
Through expressive mark-making and carefully considered composition, I invite viewers to pause and consider the quiet stories that exist within the moments we often overlook.
My work has been exhibited in Australia and internationally, including exhibitions in Berlin, and has been recognised through finalist selections and awards in contemporary art prizes.
Exhibitions and Awards
2026 Finalist – CEV Art Gallery – A World Full of Colour
2026 Special Merit Artist – Light, Space and Time Online Gallery
2026 Exhibition – Portraits of Yinggaarda Elders II, Carnarvon Library and Art Gallery
2023 Finalist – KAAF Art Prize
2023 Finalist – Brunswick Street Gallery Small Artwork Prize
2022 Group Exhibition – Door to Door, Litehaus Galerie, Berlin
2022 Group Exhibition – Art Collide