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Zoe Young is an Australian painter whose work spans still life, portraiture and abstraction. She studied at the National Art School in Sydney and earned her BFA in 2012. 

Zoe currently has a show on at Sophie Gannon Gallery in Melbourne until 13th Dec 2025.

In our conversation with Zoe, she spoke openly about the unusual path she took into the art world and how that path shaped the way she works today. She described leaving the National Art School twice, once as a young student who felt unready for the demands of formal training and again when life pulled her toward the buzz of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. 

Young grew up between Sydney, rural New South Wales and alpine-region settings, spending part of her childhood in a ski lodge on the edge of the Kosciuszko National Park. 

In her paintings Young often applies sculptural thinking (she studied sculpture at NAS), she sees canvas as form, composing her subjects with an awareness of planes, space, and structural balance. Her still lifes might show commonplace items, her portraits draw out character and story, and her abstractions explore shape, light, and composition.

Her work has earned recognition: she won the Portia Geach Memorial Award in 2018 for a portrait titled Drawing Storyboards (of film director Bruce Beresford), chosen from hundreds of entries across the nation. More broadly she has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout Australia and had a solo exhibition titled “STILL.LIFE.” in Los Angeles. 

Zoe is represented by Sophie Gannon Gallery in Melbourne and Phillip Bacon in Brisbane.