Michael Reid Southern Highlands is thrilled to welcome back to the upper level gallery Thirroul/Dharawal artist Anh Nguyen.  Of this new collection of still life and interiors paintings titled Rhymes with Orange, Nguyen says,  “I am thinking of rhymes that are not in sounds or words, and paintings that feel like something such as ‘orange’, a word famously considered to have no perfect rhyme in English. What does orange feel like? Synergies that are unexpected, pairings that are unusual, a mood that is warm, urgent, a state of change.”

‘Anh Nguyen will paint anything that she can visually engage with. She recalls a quote from another painter, whose name she has long forgotten but whose words have stayed with her: ‘Still life is the thing that is close by, figures and portraits a little farther away, and landscape is in the distance or if you get up and walk a bit, she says. ‘It is all part of the observed world and ready for a curious magpie to eyeball?While Anh will joke that still life is more forgiving than portraiture and more comfortable than plein-air landscape painting, what actually draws her to the genre is that it allows a number of different approaches. ‘It also feels very straightforward, a neutral canvas without pressure to introduce symbolism or narrative, she says.’

extract from Still. Life by Amber Creswell Bell published by Thames & Hudson

Flowers from Kate Vella’s Southern Highlands garden spill across tables scattered with vintage jugs, teacups, fruit and glassware. Each arrangement balances exuberance with intimacy, animated by thick, textured brushstrokes.

Since her 2019 solo debut, Vella has become one of the brightest stars among our regular exhibitors. A recipient of multiple awards – including the 2023 BOCCA Hannah Forbes Memorial Prize – she now returns to Michael Reid Southern Highlands with Radiance.

Don’t Wish These Days Away by British-born, Sydney-based artist Nicola Woodcock is now open and on-view in the GROUND FLOOR gallery.

In this series, Woodcock focuses on the striking landscapes that edge the Hawkesbury River, drawing on photographs and memories from family weekend trips. Sweeping vistas and intimate still-life studies of native flora speak to crisp winter days, where wattle and banksia punctuate overcast skies with bursts of colour.

Woodcock’s burgeoning affinity for native Australian plant life dates back to her first trip here as a backpacker almost 25 years ago. “A pivotal moment occurred when I encountered a Margaret Preston print gracing the kitchen wall of one of my accommodations,” she says. “The experience left an indelible impression.”

“My pursuit of understanding and venerating Australian natives deepens through meticulously rendering their forms in oil pastel. This medium, demanding rapid execution and minimalistic precision, allows me to encapsulate the essence of the botanical specimens. The objective is to provide an authentic representation – not a pursuit of scientific precision but an endeavour to evoke sentiments of awe, gratitude and comfort.”

This September, Michael Reid Southern Highlands presents a commanding showcase of leading female painters from the Iwantja Arts Community – the Indigenous-owned and -governed art centre in the rocky desert country of Indulkana, on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of South Australia.

“Painting … is a teaching tool,” says Vicki Yatjiki Cullinan, director and cultural liaison officer of Iwantja Arts, and a featured artist in ‘Ngura pilunpa – Peaceful Country’. “We use our paintings as a way of sharing stories, Country and Tjukurpa (ancestral creation stories), as well as what it was like here in the old days — like the mission times when people were living and working at the stations.”

Established nearly fifty years ago as a modest communal printmaking facility, Iwantja Arts has, through the vision of its founding directors, evolved into one of the most dynamic and respected centres of contemporary art in Australia, with an influence reaching far beyond its desert home.

Following last year’s monumental Then/Now/Always exhibition, Ngura pilunpa- Peaceful Country brings together works by Vicki Yatjiki Cullinan, Emily Cullinan, Raylene Walatinna, Betty King, Priscilla Singer, Maringka Burton, Trisha Singer, Sallyanne Robert, Rosalind Tjanyari and Daisy Barney.

Each artist, with her distinct visual language, paints a single Tjukurpa – a cultural story rooted in her Country. Barney captures the lush vibrancy of the Kapata (bush plum) plant; Cullinan evokes the waterholes, boulders and riverbeds once traversed with her family on long journeys across Country. Burton, painting her ancestral lands of Anamara Piti – the site of the Caterpillar Tjukurpa, near Irrunytju (Wingellina) – uses sweeping brushwork to map roads and waterholes in bold, fluid lines.

Vicki Potter is a Sydney-based artist, currently undertaking her Master of Fine Art at the National Art School. The artist’s work begins in the landscape but resists straightforward representation. Impressions of movement, light and distance are filtered through an intuitive process. There are no fixed subjects here; the interest lies in how the image is constructed and what it might hold.

“Walking is central to my practice,” Potter says. “It is how I gather sensory impressions and bear witness to the ephemeral: the shifting path of a flock of birds, the imprint of a well-travelled footpath, or the brief impression of waves on sand.” These details are not rendered directly, but absorbed into the surface. “Sometimes it’s a more enduring trace,” she continues, “like a fossil embedded in rock. It’s these sorts of images that find their slippery way into my paintings.” 

Following the luminous success of Due North, Bellingen-based contemporary painter Melanie Waugh returns with Harbour Held, a radiant new body of work that anchors her expressive brushwork and coastal sensibility to Sydney’s iconic harbour landscapes. These new paintings, completed during the cooler months, return to the cherished inlets and headlands of Eora/Sydney—from Cremorne Point to Shelley Beach and Cottage Point—where sandstone pathways wind through coastal scrub and brilliant green fronds burst from the foreground. “Sydney Harbour is a favourite subject of mine which is probably confusing to a lot of people because I don’t live there anymore,” Waugh says. “I return to it over and over again and yet the subjects seem endless.”

Cameilia Grace Edwards is an emerging Australian artist working in oil on canvas. Based in a small NSW regional town, she paints from a shared studio space in town with a large street-facing window, offering the community a glimpse into her process and a quiet connection to her evolving work. Over the past four and a half years, she has been transitioning from commission-based work to developing her own personal style, rooted in light, memory, and stillness. Cameilia has been selected as a finalist in the 2024 National Emerging Art Prize and the 2023 Lethbridge Small Scale Art Prize, and has twice received acquisition prizes in the Inverell Art Prize (2020 and 2023).

“This collection explores the quiet intimacy between light and landscape — the fleeting, golden moments that often go unnoticed, yet carry a deep emotional charge. Working in oils, I aim to translate memory, atmosphere, and stillness into layered compositions that feel both personal and universal.  While rooted in realism, some of my paintings drift into a softened, almost dreamlike realm — a visual echo of how we remember beauty, not how we first saw it.  I work from a shared creative space in our small town, where my easel sits by the front window. As I paint, passersby often stop to watch, wave, or step inside for a conversation. This visibility has become an unexpected and treasured part of my practice — transforming what can be a solitary process into something quietly communal. That connection with people, place, and pace grounds my work in a lived, local rhythm.  At the core of my work is a desire to hold space for calm. In a fast-moving world, painting offers me — and hopefully the viewer — a pause, a breath, and a sense of still wonder.” ~ Cameilia Grace Edwards 2025

Following her celebrated Through an Artist’s Journal collection last year, Archibald and Wynne Prize finalist Julianne Ross Allcorn returns with Interwoven, a body of work that delves deeper into her lyrical connection with the Australian bush. Much like an orchestra, the bush comes alive in her paintings. Each work captures part of its score, an interplay of colour, texture, and light.

Ross Allcorn’s creative process is rooted in the countless hours she spends sketching and writing in the field, carrying her notebook to record the rhythms of nature. She draws inspiration from the flora and fauna of the Burralong Valley and Lower Hunter, as well as her Garden Studio in Roseville, where the bushland surroundings continue to inform her work.

Artist quotes with asterix and all studio imagery courtesy of Southern Wild Co and Jessica Bellef