Julz Beresford

In June 2024, Michael Reid Sydney + Berlin proudly announced its representation of Julz Beresford, who now joins our flagship gallery’s roster of leading contemporary artists. To celebrate this exciting milestone and congratulate Beresford on this major career achievement, we are delighted to present a special release of new works on paper by the Dyarubbin/Hawkesbury-based painter.

Beresford’s painting practice is deeply rooted in her connection to the landscape, reflecting her affinity for the Dyarubbin/Hawkesbury and Snowy Monaro regions of New South Wales. Spending long, immersive stretches of time working outdoors, the artist captures her observations of tangled bushland, tumbling escarpments, and snaking waterways through gouache studies and drawings that later become crucial elements in her studio practice.

When translating these plein-air impressions onto canvas for her large-scale, atmospheric oil paintings, Beresford strives to retain the immediacy, fluidity, emotion, and expressive energy of her original works on paper. More than just points of departure, these studies serve as essential links between her quiet, solitary fieldwork and the moody, heroic paintings that result. They reflect her ambition to convey not only the landscape’s visual character but also its energy and the lived experience of being within it.

As Beresford transitions to her new home at Michael Reid Sydney, it seems fitting that the capstone to her celebrated Northern Beaches career is Hawkesbury Studies on Paper—a series of loose and expressive gouache works that capture the essence of the local environment so cherished by the artist. Bottling her experience of working en plein air, this collection of framed studies pulses with a sense of new beginnings, arriving at the perfect moment as we mark a new chapter in the career of an artist whose ever-expanding creative vision continues to drive her practice from strength to strength.