Cath Beynon

Cath Beynon, an Australian artist whose work celebrates the beauty in the overlooked, has spent much of her career honing her practice in regional New South Wales. Recently, she relocated to Melbourne’s Fitzroy, a neighbourhood alive with creative energy. Her journey began in the 1980s, with night classes at TAFE, a modest start that evolved into a twenty-five-year practice exhibited in galleries across the country.

Beynon’s art is rooted in still life, a genre she describes as steeped in “quiet drama.” Her compositions bring the neglected and imperfect into sharp focus: wilted flowers, discarded tags, bruised fruit. “I like to uncover the beauty of familiar things through scale and lighting,” she explains. Working in the alla prima style—an approach defined by painting wet-on-wet for immediacy—she finds intimacy in the fleeting moments of everyday life.

“My practice resists conventional ideas of beauty,” Beynon says. “I place these objects—often cast off or unnoticed—centre stage in compositions that balance humour and pathos.” Her work bears traces of traditional techniques, studied in homage to the old masters, yet remains resolutely contemporary in its sensitivity and perspective.

Beynon’s paintings have appeared in solo and group exhibitions, including at Sydney’s Project 90 Gallery and regional spaces in Bellingen, NSW. They have entered private collections in Australia, the United States, and Europe, attesting to their quiet, universal appeal. At home, she surrounds herself with antiques, flowers, and her animals—a domestic world that feels inseparable from her artistic one.

Music is integral to her process. Each body of work develops its own soundtrack, shaping the mood of the studio. For her most recent series, the Pet Shop Boys provided a playful counterpoint, their songs a reminder of the joy in small, unexpected moments.

Beynon’s art invites viewers to slow down, to see anew the fragile, the ephemeral, and the absurd. “My paintings ask for a second glance,” she says, “a moment to find solace in the imperfect.” In her hands, still life becomes a meditation—an exploration of how beauty emerges, quietly, from the everyday.