Liz Sullivan
Liz Sullivan gathers the stories and sources of interest from her travel experiences to the great museums, to local tales and the lived experience of those she knows, and of course the images she can glean from the internet. She has noted the way stories change and information comes to light that causes scholars to shift their understanding, to reclassify figures in paintings and even retitle land forms and historical sites. Similarly, she allows the working process of gathering, printing out sources and painting to take on a life of its own. In embracing changes of colour, halo effects there is a sense of the postmodern in her interest to include the under-drawing and structural elements with equal reverence to the over washes and paint gestures so that all can be seen together. It lends a freshness and liveliness to her works.
Click here for artwork by Liz Sullivan
Different Beauty
I have the freedom of using what is around me and the energy of my surroundings and memories to think ‘well, I am painting my interpretation and am aware of but not answerable to the past and to reality’. It is the voice inside my head where reflections, the playing of light on form and shadow and the flat painting surface is not constricted by the one viewpoint. Lines can overlap, colour and rhythms can compete and harmonise and the mind can be an adventure. Liz Sullivan 2023
Liz Sullivan is unashamedly driven to work with the substance of paint to create bold, large-scale artworks charged with optical visual energy. Sullivan is no stranger to the paintings of Cy Twombly, Turner and closer to home, Fred Williams. Her paintings are about mark-making and finding and creating beauty in the unexpected. She makes no attempt to disguise the methods of production involved in her paintings and clearly celebrates painting as the preferred medium of expression.
In Sullivan’s own words
I have never stopped painting even during challenging times in my life. These days I have greater peace of mind and I can confidently take more risks in my work.
Sullivan is a powerhouse of energy, getting up at 5am to start painting in the studio by 6am. Coupled with this great joy and enthusiastic passion for painting is a sense of urgent intensity that brings the paintings forward fast and furious. This is clear by the sheer volume of paintings executed between 2022 and 2023.
Recent exhibitions include:
solo
2024 Different Beauty [redux], Tacit Art, Melbourne
Wild Parterre, Cascade Art, Maldon
2023 Different Beauty, Tacit Art, Melbourne
New Dawn, New Day, Cascade Art, Maldon
2022 story, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2019 Open Studios, Castlemaine State Fair
Presence of Absence, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2018 She Walked Into the Room Like an Apology, Caspa Gallery, Castlemaine
2017 Fluid Borders 2, Kingston Artspace, Melbourne
2016 Fluid Borders, Art at St Francis,, Melbourne
2014 Atonement, No Vacancy Gallery, Melbourne
group
2024 Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of NSW and tour
Summer Salon, Cascade Art, Maldon
2023 Arbor, Tacit Art, Melbourne
2022 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, Sydney
Gothic to the Sublime, Cascade Gallery, Maldon
2020 20[2020}, Tacit Galleries, Melbourne
2019 Kennedy Art Prize, Adelaide
2018 John Glover Landscape Prize, Tasmania
Summer School, New York Academy of Art
2017 Kennedy Art Prize, Adelaide