Australian Women Artists

Australian Women Artists

The podcast

Ep 88 Emily Ferretti

 Emily Ferretti is a Melbourne-based painter whose still-life and landscape images move between representation and abstraction. The importance of feeling and emotion becomes obvious looking at her work. 

 She grew up on a property in country Victoria, trained at the Victorian College of the Arts, and has since built a career via residencies at Gertrude Contemporary in Melbourne, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and Greene Street Studio in New York. 

 Her monotype series Shifting Landscapes saw her selected as a finalist in the Ramsay Art Prize at the Art Gallery of South Australia, and this year she begins a new chapter with representation at Chalk Horse in Sydney, alongside her long-standing gallery, Sophie Gannon, in Melbourne.

 We spoke about a number of things. I was particularly interested in the evolution of her subject matter and the importance of her experience at TAFE before she got to VCA, how she ensured her momentum was maintained even just after leaving art college, the collegiate atmosphere amongst other artists and how that propelled her forward. Also the surprising affect a residency in Paris had on her art. It was surprising to me anyway. We also discussed how she broke into representation by a gallery (Sophie Gannon).

To hear our conversation head to wherever you get your podcasts and search Australian Women Artists. 

Emily is represented by Sophie Gannon in Melbourne and Chalk Horse in Sydney

Images 

1.   EF via Chalk Horse website

2.   Afternoon Light, 2025 ink and watercolour on paper 107 x 77.5 (Finalist R & M McGivern Prize, 2026)

Australian Women Artists

The podcast

Ep 87 Sally Ross

Sally Ross is an intellectually captivating painter who works between hypnotic landscapes and psychological portraiture. 

 Sally has spent over three decades developing a distinctive visual language defined by flattened, patterned surfaces, cool palettes, and a deep dialogue with art history. 

 After eight formative years living in France, (amongst other things, running an artists’ squat in an abandoned seventeenth-century hospice) and exhibiting across Europe and America, she returned to Melbourne to establish a studio practice. 

 A six-time Archibald Prize finalist whose portrait The Huxleys was selected for the historic Archie 100 tour. 

 Sally has work held in major public collections including the National Gallery of Victoria and the National Portrait Gallery.

 But it’s the experiences and lessons she’s learnt along the way that were absorbing to me...and no doubt would be valuable to those artists starting their journey. An enjoyable conversation. She’s fabulous.

Head to wherever you get your podcasts and search Australian Women Artists. 

Sally is represented by Smith & Singer, Melbourne

& Martin Browne Contemporary, Sydney

Images

1.   SR by Mel Savage

2.   Autoportrait, 2021 (Archibald finalist) oil on board 130 x 110

3&4 The Huxleys, 2018 (Archibald finalist) oil on wood panel 130x110

5. SR with the Huxleys

6. Riverbed grevillea, 2025, oil on board, 130 x 110

Australian Women Artists

 The podcast

Ep 86 Elizabeth Barnett

Elizabeth Barnett is a painter and printmaker who also utilises textiles and pottery. Her still life and interior paintings have become instantly recognisable — plant-filled nooks, stacked books, jugs and vases, all rendered in a distinct palette that reflects the season. 

 She has a deep reverence for the everyday. From her early training in the rigorous world of printmaking to lush, translucent paintings on stretched linen, and eventually to thickly layered oil works in her bushland studio. 

 She is also an incredible community builder, having co-founded Melbourne's iconic Schoolhouse Studios, a massive, not-for-profit creative hub. 

 Today, working from her home studio in the Macedon Ranges, Elizabeth continues to celebrate the gentle, wondrous beauty of daily life while acting as a passionate advocate for female representation in the arts.

 “Her subjects do not sit flat upon the canvas, but instead reach up from it, enlivened by the wild and natural world. This liveliness belies the ‘stillness’ of still life painting and along with Barnett’s painterly gestures of shadow, line and colour creates a visual dynamism reaches beyond tradition.”

To have a listen to our conversation, head to the link in my bio or search Australian Women Artists wherever you find your podcasts. 

Elizabeth is represented by Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne. 

Images supplied by artists

1.   EB

2.   Nocturne Arrangement 2026 oil on linen 215 x 153

3.   Floribunda and Gwen 2026 oil on linen 81 x 91

4.   Nocturne 2024 oil on linen 153 x 122

5 & 6 installation shots

Australian Women Artists

The podcast

Ep 85 Nell

Nell is one of Australia's most distinctive contemporary artists, working across painting, sculpture, performance, video and installation. 

She has spent three decades building a visual language shaped by rock 'n' roll, Buddhist philosophy and religious iconography. Smiley faces, lightning bolts, ghosts, tears and eggs recur throughout her art and help create works that have been described as playful, insightful and poetic. 

Her work explores the binaries of human existence – birth and death, sorrow and happiness, light and dark. 

It’s a fascinating story and, with 300+ exhibitions to consider, I’ve had the unenviable task of choosing just a few to discuss without minimising the others otherwise we’d be still chatting well into 2027!

‘Nell has developed a unique visual language that traverses scale, medium and materiality. Regardless of the outcome, her work explores oppositional thresholds and the fertile space that exist beyond the binary: from intimate to immersive, found to fabricated, high to low culture, two-dimensions to three-dimensions, individual to collaborative, ancient to contemporary, sacred to profane.... At the heart of Nell’s practice is an offering of connection and companionship; a reminder that we are not alone.’ Station Gallery (representing Nell).

To have a listen to our conversation, head to my bio or search ‘Australian Women Artists’ wherever you normally find your podcasts.

Images 

1.    Holding Both, 2026, Museum of Contemporary Art, Photo Anna Kucera

2.    Let There Be Robe, 2011, Museum of Old and New Art, Photo Rémi Chauvin

3.    ROCK GATE, 2019, Carriageworks, Photo Zan Wimberley

4.    Nell x Colin McCahon: Through the Wall of Birth and Death, 2024, Dowse Art           Museum, Photo Sam Hartnett

5.    Face Everything, 2025-26, Heide Modern, Photo Christo Crocker

6+7. NELL ANNE QUILT, 2020-24, Photo Jenni Carter

Australian Women Artists

 The podcast

 Ep 84 Chelsea Gustafsson

 Chelsea Gustafsson is an artist whose work invites us to look closer at the quiet, often overlooked items of our daily lives—transforming mass-produced objects, ornaments, and domestic clutter into highly detailed, deeply metaphorical still lifes. 

 Her paintings are incredibly beautiful, but they also carry a sharp undercurrent of modern anxiety, apathy, and ecological grief. 

 From her early beginnings influenced by 3D sculptors to painting on her dining table, Chelsea has built a formidable practice that has seen her work acquired by the City of Melbourne, celebrated as a finalist in the prestigious Kennedy Prize, and exhibited internationally in Berlin. And very recently, she was selected for the celebrated Salon des Refusés at the S.H. Ervin Gallery.

 “I like to play with objects and textures that don’t necessarily sit well together naturally. Through the process of constructing items into a sculptural form and twisting or balancing them to find their sweet spot for a composition and watching how the light falls and reflects across them, they begin to gel as a single form and a beauty emerges.”

Head to my bio and follow the link to our podcast conversation...or search Australian Women Artists wherever you find your podcasts.

Chelsea is represented by:

Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne

Penny Contemporary, Hobart

Michael Reid Berlin

Images

1.   CG supplied by artist

2.   Self Portrait, 2026, Oil on board (all works on these images are OOB) 30 x 40

3.   Lobster, 2025, 15 x 20

4.   Surfcoast Highway, 2019, 15 x 20

5.   Mint, 2020, 40 x 50

6.   Tasmanian Tigers, 2024 22 x 30

7.   Trophy 01, 2022, 15 x 20

Australian Women Artists

The podcast

Ep 83 Nicole Kelly

Nicole Kelly is one of contemporary Australia’s most sensitive and intellectually rigorous painters, working beautifully across landscape, portraiture, and still life. 

She creates deeply evocative, expressive oil works that challenge the very mechanics of how we represent, and perhaps try to own, the Australian landscape. In fact, it would probably be fair to say that she is an artist who's spent nearly two decades quietly ‘unsettling’ one of Australia's oldest genres.

Since graduating from the National Art School and winning the prestigious Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, Nicole has built a formidable practice defined by evolving technical processes and academic rigour. 

 She’s been a finalist in a number of awards and has also won significant prizes including her recently winning the prestigious Evelyn Chapman Art Award. She will utilise that to study Nordic painting traditions. And we need to discuss that of course. 

Her paintings pull you in with glowing colour and soft, pliable brushwork, then quietly remind you that no landscape is ever just scenery.

Her work is held in numerous public and private collections.

A really enjoyable conversation and to hear it, head to the link in my bio or search ‘Australian Women Artists’ wherever you find your podcasts. 

You can find more information about Nicole at her website:

www.nicolerenaekelly.com

Nicole is represented by

Nicholas Thomson Gallery, Melbourne (@nicholasthompsongallery)

Art House Gallery, Sydney (@arthousegallery)

Images

1.   NK via Nicholas Thompson Gallery

2.   Jumaadi + Clouds + Rain, 2017 oil on polyester (all paintings on this list are OOP), 150 x 130

3.   Rain Inscribed Lines, 2024, 169 x 198

4.   Bird Hour, 2026, 117 x 107

5.   Dance of March Flies, 2024, 138 x 167

6.   Waiting for the Sun, 2026, 122 x 153

Australian Women Artists

The podcast

Ep 82 Kirsten Coelho

Kirsten Coelho’s importance lies partly in how she actually expands the language of Australian ceramics.

Kirsten is one of Australia’s leading contemporary ceramic artists, known for almost ethereal porcelain vessels that sit between the functional and the sculptural. Her works in porcelain are “creating functional forms and vessels of other-worldly perfection that fuse the formal with the abstract.” 

Her work is shaped by the history of ceramics, architectural surfaces, and a deep interest in how ordinary objects carry memory and cultural meaning and it’s grounded in international ceramic history. But it also speaks to distinctly Australian conditions: light, landscape, domestic life, and the material traces of settler history. And we discuss that in our lovely languid conversation. 

Kirsten’s work is exhibited extensively internationally, and she has won significant awards, including the prestigious Sidney Myer Ceramic Award, the City of Hobart Art Prize and the Josephine Ulrick Ceramic Award. Her work is represented in numerous institutional collections including the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.

Kirsten is represented by Sullivan Strumpf NSW + Singapore, Philip Bacon Galleries Qld, Adrian Sassoon UK London, The Scottish Gallery UK Edinburgh. 

@kirsten_coelho_

 @sullivanstrumpf

@philipbacongalleries

@adrian_sassoon_gallery

@scottishgallery

Images supplied by artist

1.   KC by Daniel Noone

2.   Horizon, image by Grant Hancock

3.   Pillar, image by Grant Hancock

4.   Ithaca, image by Grant Hancock

Australian Women Artists

The podcast 

Ep 81 Jenna Lee

Jenna Lee is an artist whose work invites us to slow down and reconsider the stories hidden within the words and objects we often take for granted. 

A Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri woman with Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Irish and Scottish heritage, Jenna has developed a remarkable practice that works across sculpture, installation, paper, photography and moving image. 

She transforms books, archives and printed texts into beautiful and thought-provoking artworks that ask important questions...including who gets to tell history. 

Jenna's work has been recognised through numerous awards, including the 2024 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, the 2023 Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award (Emerging Artist), the 2020 Wandjuk Marika 3D Memorial Award at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), the 2019 Dreaming Award presented by Creative Australia. She was even one of 5 shortlisted artists for the Venice Biennale for 2026. 

Jenna Lee has developed a unique and valuable artistic voice.

Jenna is represented by Mars Gallery, and some of her available works can be found at https://marsgallery.com.au/jenna-lee/

More works and info can be also be found at https://jennalee.art/about

Images

1 JL image by Anna Katsanevas

2 Instalation view of JL & Kojima Shouten's Balarr (To become light) 2023

3 White Grass Trees 1-3, 2021, pages of 'Aboriginal words and place names' bookbind thread, organic cotton thread, florist wire, glue, bookcover board 119, base 20 x 23 to 39 x 38

4 from HIStory Vessels exhibition, 2020, deconstructed pages of the Ladybird history book, 'The Story of Captain Cook'

5 To make light together 03, 2023, digital photograph 51 x 66

Just wanted to also drop a quick note here that I will be taking a few weeks off after this is published and wanted to say a heartfelt thanks for everyone’s support and encouragement thus far. I've enjoyed this immensely. I’ll be back in a few weeks with some very exciting guests and projects.

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

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...