Australian Women Artists

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...

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

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

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

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