Mirra Whale

Eora/Sydney-based artist Mirra Whale approaches the still-life genre with elegant restraint and attention to the nuanced imperfections that animate her subjects.  Her work explores the formal and conceptual limits of the genre of still life painting. She aims to celebrate ‘unsophisticated’ subject matter and the undisturbed simplicity of the common place, finding beauty in the nuances of the familiar.

In 2025, Mirra exhibited a suite of new works here in the Southern Highlands gallery, all featuring her floral muse, the magnolia.  So much of the magnolia’s beauty and enduring mystique owes to its inherent contrasts – its great, yolky blooms gracefully unfolding for a fleeting moment in vibrant bursts of colour against gnarled and craggy branches.

The flower has a personal resonance for Mirra – blooming around the time her daughter, Reya, was born. By capturing this subject in its final blush of ripe, jewel-like beauty as the season reaches its end, the artist delivers a comment on memory and the rapid tempo of change. A selection of these paintings will be shown at the local Regional Gallery Ngununggula, alongside the ethereal works of early 20th century Australian painter Clarice Beckett.

Mirra Whale is a five-time finalist in the Archibald Prize and the winner of the EMSLA Still Life Award, and has been recognised as a finalist in the following art prizes; Kedumba Drawing Award, Hurford Hardwood Portrait Prize, Salon Des Refuses, Portia Geach Portrait Prize, AME Bale Art Prize, Hornsby Art Prize, Mortimore Art Prize and the Manning Gallery Prize.