Out of the Blue is a mini-suite of oil paintings emerging from a practice concerned, in essence, with the condition of being human. These works – forming Armelle Swan’s debut with the gallery – aim to characterise, in poetic and intuitive terms, some of the most charged human experiences — grief among them.

Across the suite, notions of presence and absence recur. In still life the figure is typically absent, yet it may reappear by proxy: a cup, jug or bottle operating as a kind of cipher for the human in the story.

Each work here centres on a vessel — cups, a vase, a jug, a bowl — a motif that since antiquity has carried metaphorical weight, touching on ideas of literal and figurative containment and the human impulse to keep or hold.

Two works, ‘Not in the Picture’ and ‘Revealed’, feature vessels decorated in blue and white motifs traditionally associated with funerals, death and mourning in Chinese culture. This symbolism sits in neat alignment with still life’s historical relationship to mortality, and with the larger theme of grief within the suite. These elements became newly compelling in Swan’s practice following two life-altering experiences: the recent arrival of a daughter-in-law of Chinese ancestry, and, some years earlier, the death of her own daughter — a loss that precipitated a long and brutal journey of grief. In these paintings, the cultural and the deeply personal converge.

‘Kitchen Sill (after Hopper)’ may appear, at first glance, to depict a simple domestic interior, yet its composition carries a more philosophical charge. The velvety darkness outside, the bright white sill, and the pendant lights reflected in the glass recall the haunting sensibility of Edward Hopper’s Automat. The window becomes a threshold: a meeting point of dark and light. The reflected lights appear to move from the interior into the night, piercing both the window pane and the picture plane as they recede like a row of distant streetlamps. As ever, the window is an ‘eye’ that sees, and the view it frames echoes the act of painting itself.

‘Glow’ offers an interior heightened by a keen register of attention — a meditation on observation and presence.

Armelle Swan has exhibited in group and solo shows, completed numerous portrait commissions, and been a finalist in several awards, including the Waverley 9 x 5” (twice), the Kings School Art Prize, the Harden Landscape Prize, and various portraiture and still life prizes. Highlights include curated exhibitions such as ACB Selects (2023), The Making Effect for the Arts Health Association NSW (2020), and Dot, dot, dot… (2017) at Sydney College of the Arts Galleries.

In 2019 she undertook a study tour of Italy with Dr Julie Fragar, and in 2023 completed a major arts–health commission for SPHERE Knowledge Translation, creating works based on her interpretation of academic health-study findings. Her works are represented in private collections in Australia, South Africa, the UK, Dubai and Singapore, and in public collections including the Young Endeavour Youth Scheme, the Archdiocese of Hobart and the Black Dog Institute.

Opening this December, Botanica Vita II assembles nine artists who return, again and again, to the natural world — to the flowers, branches and unruly greens that anchor their sense of place. For each, the botanical is less a subject than a lens: a way of noticing, of keeping time, of understanding how the living world impresses itself on the mind.

Several familiar voices reappear here — India Mark, Louise Anders, Angie de Latour, Susan Morris, Miranda Summers, Nadja Kabriel and Baden Croft — their works forming a kind of ongoing conversation across years and exhibitions. They are joined, for the first time, by Allie Webb and Alice Laura Palmer, whose paintings bring a fresh tempo to the still-life tradition, alert to subtle shifts in colour, light and structure.

Across the collection, the works share an understanding that the botanical is never static. Light shifts, colour gathers and recedes, compositions tighten and loosen. A single stem can hold a surprising amount of intent; a vase can become an anchor point for an entire scene.

Botanica Vita II asks viewers to consider why these forms endure — why flowers, branches and arranged objects continue to offer artists a way into deeper observation.

Working in a bold, expressive impasto, David King charts roads, ridgelines and shifting weather with an almost operatic instinct for drama: sky pressing low over the hills, light pooling in unexpected places, fences and telegraph lines drawing the eye forward. The scenes he paints travel widely — the Illawarra escarpment, the Central Tablelands, the edges of Goulburn, Orford’s pale fields, the misted greens of Ireland — but his subject is not geography. “I see the same things everywhere,” he says. “Ireland, Tasmania, the Tablelands — fences, gates, telegraph poles. They join all these places.”

The Holiday Hamper is our festive-season showcase — a glittering ensemble of works that celebrate the pleasure of looking. Conceived as an invitation to gift art, live with art, and discover artists you may not yet know, the Hamper gathers pieces that feel intimate in scale yet expansive in spirit. From Brenton Drechsler’s cinematic Bath to Jessie Breakwell’s affectionate portrait Jean Paul, the collection moves through houses, gardens and remembered moments with tenderness and curiosity.

Michael Reid Southern Highlands is delighted to welcome back Holly Dormor to the gallery, with her collection of new work,  From the North. Since her sold out exhibition at Michael Reid Northern Beaches in 2024, collectors have been eagerly awaiting her next suite of paintings.

From the North is a continued exploration of light and its transformative nature.  “The harsh sun light from my northern windows has an extraordinary effect on a subject – particularly botanicals. Leaves illuminate or disappear into shadow, forming curious, high-contrast images I never tire of.”

Dormor is a visual artist working in Sydney NSW. Her work can be recognised through her use of light to reveal and conceal her subjects, forging a reflective look at ordinary botanicals. Dormor was a finalist in the 2023 National Emerging Art Prize and the 2023 Hunter’s Hill Art Prize. As a multidisciplinary artist she was a finalist in the 2015 Woollahra Small Sculpture Prize. Her work is held privately throughout Australia.

This November, Peta West and Miranda Hampson return to Michael Reid Southern Highlands with Vantage — the first time these two celebrated artists have exhibited together. The exhibition brings into focus the ways we see, remember, and interpret the land.

Lake Conjola–based printmaker Peta West unveils two of the most commanding works of her career — including the monumental Sweetwater. Across vast linocuts, carved line by line over hundreds of hours, West renders the landscape with masterful precision. “I’m constantly searching for ways to carve the landscape with depth,” she says, “so that when you look at the work, you feel as though you could step right into the reimagined vista before you.”

Her latest works were shaped after travelling through Central Australia, where studies of flora and topography became the foundation for these intricate, reimagined terrains — rolled by hand in Prussian blue ink onto fine Japanese paper. Once a photographer, West brings the same attuned sense of light and structure to her printmaking, carving for months to reveal flora and birdlife in astonishing detail. The result cements her as one of the foremost printmakers working in Australia today.

Miranda Hampson, an Anaiwan artist practising on Dharawal Country, follows her sold-out Lookaftering collection with new paintings that continue her exploration of Country and kin. Working in part with ochre sourced with permission from Elders, she creates pared-back compositions that hover between map and memory. Across their surfaces, fine lines recall the weave of baskets, while cracked and layered forms evoke salt plains and dry riverbeds — landscapes marked by endurance, history, and care.

Together, West and Hampson offer two vantage points on the Australian landscape — one carved, one painted — each a meditation on place, connection, and the patient act of seeing.

We are delighted to announce Clarity After the Storm, a new series of oil paintings by South Coast–based artist Ash Leslie. The works register the changing light that follows a storm, tracing a passage from turbulence to calm.

“This series of work was completed after a long period of stormy weather at the end of winter,” Leslie explains. “As the storm cleared I was taken with the way the sunlight illuminated the landscape in between the patches of passing fog and mist. With hints of spring on the horizon I felt a sense of clarity with the promise of the warm weather to come.”

Ash Leslie’s open-ended process embraces chance and discovery. Layers of oil paint coalesce into forms that hover on the edge of recognition, drifting through diaphanous washes of grey, moss, and blush.

Recognised across Australia, including finalist selections in the Paddington Art Prize, Flow Art Prize, and Signature Art Prize, Leslie has quickly established herself as a singular voice in contemporary abstraction. ‘Clarity After the Storm’ opens this weekend in the Mezzanine Gallery.

Images of the artist courtesy of Jessica Bellef