Betty King is an esteemed painter and cultural leader from the Indulkana community, and one of ten women featured in our upcoming exhibition, Ngura pilunpa – Peaceful Country. King works from Iwantja Arts, the Indigenous-owned and -governed art centre on the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of South Australia.

King’s paintings capture the beauty in the landscape of Watjapilla, a diverse soakage not far from the Indulkana community, teaming with fish, bird life, and many plants.

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Libby Wakefield’s paintings arise from the rivers and wetlands of the Southern Highlands, observed on foot and from her kayak and later translated into oil on board pieces in the studio. In her hands, water is alive: a reflective surface, a mirror of sky, a shifting register of time and season—evoking the luminous intensity of J.M.W. Turner.

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Living in Thirroul on the New South Wales coast, Anh Nguyen draws inspiration from her surroundings and everyday experiences. She embraces what British artist Sara Lee Roberts calls ‘percolation and interleaving’: “I find thinking time in the interruptions and distractions of daily life. Then when I do get studio time, everything flows out naturally.”

Nguyen paints quickly and confidently, trusting her instincts. “I try not to overthink or second-guess,” she says. “There’s something about the immediacy of working that feels honest.” Curator Amber Creswell Bell observes, “Her work has an ethereal, soft quality but is very assured. It captures the small moments that, stitched together, form the texture of a life.”

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David King’s paintings hum with atmosphere — coastal skies at the edge of stormlight, mountains lost in mist, and the quiet glow of a landscape between dusk and dark. A former principal baritone with Opera Australia, King has traded one stage for another, swapping arias for oils in a creative journey that feels both bold and inevitable.

Born in Dublin and now based in Bulli, King brings a striking new voice to the Light Colour Landscape showcase. His work is deeply rooted in the northern Illawarra — a region he captures in thick, expressive brushwork and moody, layered light. Mentored by acclaimed painter Paul Ryan, King embraces a “punk impasto” style that gives his scenes a raw, visceral edge.

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Nicola Woodcock is a British-born, Sydney-based artist whose practice is defined by her meticulous use of oil pastel to explore the Australian landscape and its native flora. Her fascination with the country’s plant life began nearly 25 years ago during her first visit, inspired by a Margaret Preston print she encountered on the wall of her accommodation. Through oil pastel, a medium that demands rapid execution and precision, Woodcock captures the essence of each specimen, creating works that convey emotion and presence rather than scientific exactitude.

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“Since I moved back to Indulkana, I’ve loved working at the art centre—it’s a place with lots of good happy feelings. It’s full of friends and family, working and laughing. It’s great to see young people getting involved too; they’re going to be the ones who will keep this place strong, keep it happy and full of love and laughter.”

—Emily Cullinan, quoted in Hannah Presley, Introduction, in IWANTJA: Iriti / Kuwari / Titutjara (Then / Now / Always), Thames and Hudson, 2023.

“Since I moved back to Indulkana, I’ve loved working at the art centre—it’s a place with lots of good happy feelings. It’s full of friends and family, working and laughing. It’s great to see young people getting involved too; they’re going to be the ones who will keep this place strong, keep it happy and full of love and laughter.”

—Emily Cullinan, quoted in Hannah Presley, Introduction, in IWANTJA: Iriti / Kuwari / Titutjara (Then / Now / Always), Thames and Hudson, 2023.

In Traces, vertical skeins of ochre stretch upwards, anchoring the canvas in a field of soft, atmospheric greys. Loose calligraphic strokes sweep across the picture plane, not to describe a form, but to animate the surface. Like Tuckson, Potter is interested in the physical immediacy of painting, how a mark made quickly, even roughly, can carry authority.

Remains plays in a higher key, purples, aquas, and lavenders form a textured field, animated by painterly incidents: daubs, drips, and punctuating dots of colour. By contrast, Swoop pulls dramatically back. A pale, chalky ground dominates, with faint marks and subtle variations in texture. There is a sense of openness, even fragility in the work.

Inflected with memory, the works incorporate more recognisable manmade structures—“a lighthouse, a bridge, a cemetery”—yet remain tethered to the shifting shoreline light and lush vegetation of the New South Wales coastline. These are scenes rendered not with photographic precision but with emotional clarity. As Waugh puts it, “The real reason I paint the nooks of Sydney Harbour I believe is because of the nostalgia it holds for me, having left the city after 23 years.”

Waugh’s practice is instinctive, process-driven, and rooted in drawing. “I have always known how to draw and did a lot of watercolours as a child,” she recalls. “It was the natural progression to move from drawing to painting… I didn’t need anyone else to help me and could pack it in my backpack.” She works in oil alla prima, beginning most studio sessions by stretching her own canvases—“which prepares me to get in the zone to paint”—and completing each work in a single burst. “At heart I’m a plein air painter,” she explains. “It’s quite frantic… I don’t wait for layers to dry.” Working rapidly with large brushes, solvent, and palette knives, Waugh paints from memory, plein air sketches, and photographs, seeking not to replicate a scene but to distil it.

“There’s perspective in my drawing, but there’s no perspective at the same time,” she explains. “I would like the viewer to go on a journey with me. If someone asks me about the work, I often say stay in front of it for a few minutes and look at everything at once, the colours, the way the foliage is moving, the birds. And then close your eyes, and listen for what you saw. You know you are in the landscape because you’ve looked and focused. You will find yourself trying to recreate what you would hear if you were walking through it.”*

Allcorn’s paintings are alive with energy and motion, where banksias, grevilleas, wattles, and gumnuts swirl in rhythmic harmon. Birds, insects, and mammals flicker into view among the layers of paint, their motion suspended as though captured mid-flight. While she is well known for her distinctive use of raw plywood, where exposed areas of timber act as quiet clearings within the rich thickets of line and colour, this exhibition also introduces an extraordinary work rendered on vintage pianola paper. The concertina of flora and fauna unfolds like a visual scroll, underscoring the musicality inherent in her compositions. Here, the perforations on the pianola paper suggest birdsong.

The Intertwined was shaped by a formative journey abroad. “This is one of the artworks created from my trip to Kenya,” she shares, “where I had the opportunity not only to go on a safari but to be invited to teach and work with young artists in the Mizizi Primary School and with young adult artists at the Uweze Art Gallery in Kibera for four days. That experience will never come again.” In these pieces, the flora and fauna of Australia and Kenya meet in layered compositions that honour endangered species from both regions.

Fragments traces a path or a journey. At a simple level, it describes a walk through the bush. More profoundly, it maps the intersection of two civilizations. “I have used iconic artefacts from both Indigenous and colonial cultures, ceramics and Indigenous vessels such as the koolamon,” she says. “The koolamon was made by an Awakabul elder for the opening and smoking ceremony of an exhibition in the Wollombi Fire Shed this year.”

Historically, archaeologists have valued artefacts like ceramic fragments for the way they illuminate civilizations. In Allcorn’s work, the broken shards represent early colonial settlers. She created her own fragments, decoupaged images with bush scenes, to form a landscape filled with dense detail. Here are close observations of the Australian bush, images of symbolic and metaphorical significance, maps, foreign ships, and the familiar flora and fauna of the Burralong Valley.

“The image attempts to describe a connection of all peoples to the land,” she reflects. “It explores an intrinsic relationship between humans and the natural world, and how powerfully the environment influences mental and physiological being. Fundamentally, I am interested in how humans understand and change the environment.”

“In a contemporary manner, Allcorn’s paintings to my eye, channel an earlier world of a more detailed observation and the Australian bush. Her paintings make use of raw plywood to create a unique negative space on which to work. The artist sketch paints in layers, sometimes panoramic in scope- but always hyper observant. From top to bottom, left to right Allcorn’s paintings read as if you are standing within a grove of native trees. In the gum trees, you see through the brush and into canopy, to witness a densely packed and active world.”

-Michael Reid OAM, 2023