Australian Women Artists

Australian Women Artists
 
The podcast
 
Ep 72 Lily Mae Martin
 
Lily Mae Martin is a remarkable visual artist known for her deeply personal explorations of womanhood, motherhood, and the human condition. Her own strength and resilience in the face of, at times, enormous challenges, is remarkable.
She is celebrated for her masterful draughtsmanship, particularly her delicate and detailed cross-hatching using fine liner ink pens, building up thousands upon thousands of tiny lines to produce an incredible tone. 
After graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2008 and winning the Lionel Gell travelling scholarship, she spent years refining her practice in Berlin and Wales before returning to Australia. 
Her work has always been predominantly figurative, with a love of traditional portraiture approached in an unconventional way — seeking to capture people outside of the polished, self-conscious way they present themselves to a camera.
She was a finalist for the 2016 Rick Amor Drawing Prize, Art Gallery of Ballarat; winner of the 2016 Ursula Hoff Institute Emerging Artist Acquisitive Art Award in the National Works on Paper exhibition, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery; and shortlisted for the 2016 Paul Guest Drawing Prize, Bendigo Art Gallery, Adelaide Perry drawing prize 2017 and the Dobell Drawing Prize 2019. Lily Mae also contributed to The Drawing Board – a four part segment exploring drawing on Radio National, The Arts Program in 2022.
 
Lily Mae (@lilymaemartin) is represented by Scott Livesey Galleries (@scottliveseygalleries)
 
I referred in our conversation to the National Gallery of Victoria ‘Drop-by Drawing’ programme of which Lily Mae was a part. The link is below
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/multimedia/drop-by-drawing-with-lily-mae-martin/
Head to the link in my bio to have a listen to our conversation.
 
 
Images
1.   LMM supplied by artist
2.   Orchid Medley 2025 ink on cotton paper 15 x 20
3.   Waterloo State Forest 2016 ink on paper 76 x 105
4.   Nothing is Untouched (Moorabool) 2024 ink on paper 56 x 76
5.   Emerging

Australian Women Artists
 
The podcast
 
Ep 71 Julie Fragar
 
Julie Fragar is one of the country's most compelling painters. 
For those who are familiar with that name, it could well be because she recently made headlines as the winner of the prestigious 2025 Archibald Prize. What is perhaps not as well known to the general public is that that win marked the 4th time she had been a finalist in that competition.
For over two decades, Julie's practice has been described as pushing the intellectual limits of painting. Her works are deeply psychological, and weave together autobiography, historical narratives and intense human experiences. 
We had a great conversation talking about her childhood in country NSW, her art school experiences, her visual technique which she describes as not "layering," but rather as images "woven" or "knitted" together, where all images exist simultaneously on the canvas, the incredible works she produced after sitting in the public gallery of the Supreme Court and later when she shadowed a gynaecological surgeon and witnessed the visceral reality of the operating theatre and, of course, her 2025 win in the Archibald Prize. 
Julie Fragar’s work is held in major public collections including the Art Gallery of New South Wales; Art Gallery of South Australia; and the Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art. She has been the recipient of major awards and institutional commissions. And Professor Fragar also happens to be Deputy Director (Research) at the Queensland College of Art and Design, Griffith University. 
 
Head to the link in my bio to hear our conversation, or search Australian Women Artists wherever you find your podcasts. 
 
 
 
Images
1.   JF, AGNSW, Diana Panuccio
2.   Flagship Mother Multiverse (Justene) 2025 oil on canvas, 240 x 180 (Archibald winner 2025)
3.   Richard, 2020 oil on canvas 180 x 135 (Archibald finalist)
4.   Trust, 2026 oil on canvas 180 x 135
5.   Drown in Your Own Ambition, 2021
6.   Origin of the World (or One Battle After Another), 2026

Australian Women Artists
 The podcast
 Ep 70 Lisa Bale
 
 It would probably be fair to say that Lisa Bale sits outside the art establishment. 
She lives and works remotely on a bush property situated in the hinterland of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. 
Not having formal art training has been no hindrance to an exceptional talent. In fact, it’s probably a big contributing factor to her success. Her works are witty, surprising, and visually arresting takes on modern-day dilemmas. 
Her extensive career spans nearly four decades and she has deliberately cultivated a distinctive aesthetic that marries meticulous technique with deeply personal, often idiosyncratic subject matter. 
Her works are held in the permanent collections of prestigious institutions, including the Art Gallery of South Australia, QAGOMA, the University of Queensland Art Museum, Rockhampton Art Gallery, and the private collection of Lord Jeffrey Archer in London. 
The work is stunning, and I’m honoured that she’s chosen to have a chat on AWA because in nearly 40 years of creativity, Lisa has told me she has never done this sort of focussed and in-depth interview.
For over 20 years Lisa has been represented by Philip Bacon Galleries, one of Australia’s leading art galleries.
 
From their website... “Meticulously producing hyper-real imagery, Bale uses oil paint and a deft hand to load dramatic scenes with rich metaphor and illusory turns.” 
 
Head to the link in my bio to hear our conversation or search for ‘Australian Women Artists’ wherever you find your podcasts. 
 
Images
 1. Lisa Bale, 2026, photograph by Kim Guthrie @iphotographstuff
 2. Rose Garden, 2008, 53 x 70 cm, oil on canvas
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA)
 3. Sacred Heart, 2019, 61 x 80 cm, oil on canvas
Private Collection
 4. Dig, 2011, 68 x 100 cm, oil on canvas
Collection: University of Queensland Art Museum
 5. Icebreaker, 2014, 49 x 83 cm, oil on canvas
Private Collection
 6. Inquisition, 2016, 54 x 80 cm, oil on canvas 
Collection: Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA)

Australian Women Artists
 The Podcast
 Ep 69 Heidi Yardley 
 
 Heidi Yardley is a Melbourne-born painter whose work occupies a significant space in contemporary Australian art — intimate, psychological, and immediately recognisable. 
 ‘[Heidi] works with found images to create scenes of mysterious temporality. Often painted in faded hues, her artwork is suggestive of a period that could sit somewhere between the 1960’s and 70’s.’
 She works with oil paint and charcoal and incredible collaging techniques where she creates anonymous portraits of sexualised and domesticated femininity. 
 Over three decades she has drawn on vintage imagery, cinema, music, and the female experience as inspiration. 
 Heidi has been a finalist in significant prizes including The Archibald Prize, Wynne Prize, Sulman Prize and The Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, has held two artist residencies in New York, and has been listed as one of Australia’s 50 most collectable artists.
 It was a great broad ranging conversation. We covered her obsession with art at high school and her struggle to get into the painting course she desperately wanted (spoiler: she persisted and got in!), her love of figurative art and having to resist pressures from outside to think and act more conceptually – and her persistence paid dividends again. I loved her description of how she felt when overseas standing in front of paintings she had only seen in books to that point. We talked about her visual language, how she finds titles for her works and ... Nick Cave. Which I’m always up for a chat about. 
 Mood, mystery and the unresolved image. 
 
Head to the link in my bio to have a listen. Heidi is represented by Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane (@janmurphygallery) and Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne (@nicholasthompsongallery)
 
 
Images
1.   HY by Lisa Barmby
2.   The masked bride, 2024 oil on canvas 140 x 100
3.   The black veil, 2019 charcoal on primed paper 84 x 110
4.   The door, 2021 oil on canvas 144 x 116
5.   Psychique 2021 oil on canvas 140 x 110

Australian Women Artists
 The podcast
 
Ep 68  Suzanne Archer 
 
 Across six decades, Suzanne Archer has forged a singular career in Australian art, marked by independence from curatorial trends and sustained commitment to difficult subjects. 
 From youthful abstraction through immersion in the Australian bush to a fearless confrontation with death and time. 
 Suzanne has won major prizes including the Wynne Prize for landscape and the Dobell Prize for Drawing, and her work is held in significant public collections nationwide. 
 Her constant evolution is fascinating.
 We discussed many aspects of her career. The origins of her artistic journey, her immigration to Australia in the 1960s and the incredible effect living on the NSW South Coast had on her, how she made a living in those early days from art, residencies in New York and Paris and Zimbabwe and how those experiences taught her to never shut down what is possible, how moving to the country and that sense of space had a profound effect on her and her art.
 
We had this conversation at Nanda Hobbs Gallery in Sydney when her recent exhibition, Manifestation, was showing.
 
Suzanne is represented by Nanda Hobbs, Sydney
 
 
Images
1.   SA in front of a detail of Gorge Country – Wedderburn, 2024 oil on canvas 198 x 408
2.   Brown velvet, 2025 oil on canvas, 153 x 153
3.   Arty-Fact 2013, cloth bag, collaged embroidery, cardboard, acrylic paint, canvas mat
4.   Derangement, 2010, ink, charcoal, pastel on 2 sheets of white paper (winner Dobel Prize)
5.   Waratahs Wedderburn, 1994, oil on canvas, 240 x 242