Wading

Melbourne based painter Betra Fraval has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours) from the Victoria College of the Arts and has held solo exhibitions in Melbourne since 2008 at institutions including Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts, C3 Contemporary Art Space and Res Artists, Glasshouse Studios. Her work has been included in group exhibitions since 2007 in Victoria and New South Wales and internationally in Finland, Peru and France at institutions including Gippsland Art Gallery, The Dax Centre, Bayside Gallery, Bus Projects, Bundoora Homestead, Victorian College of the Arts and Seventh Gallery.

Betra has undertaken residencies at Bundanon, NSW (2025), Sanskriti Kendra in India (2009), Sachaqa Centro De Arte in the Amazon Rainforest, Peru (2018), Hôtel Sainte Valière in France (2019) and the Helsinki International Artist Programme in Finland (2019). She has been a finalist in the John Leslie Art Prize (2024, 2020, 2016), the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize (2022) and the R&M McGivern Prize (2019). Betra’s work is held in the collection of Artbank, Gippsland Art Gallery as well as private collections in Australia and internationally.

“These recent paintings explore landscape as physical and psychological terrain where external and internal states converge. In homage to moments of vulnerable immersion within the landscape after a period of personal upheaval, they seek lightness without denying weight. They indicate my shift toward intuitive, gestural language as figures and forms hover between emergence and dissolution. Paint is just within my control, pooling, bleeding and settling intuitively. The tender pieces hold the need to find release within a demanding world, expanding my broader inquiry into letting go—of certainty, productivity, and fixed identity—to landscapes that emotionally shape and hold us.”

Her paintings open into soft, atmospheric spaces where colour drifts and forms gently dissolve – expansive, peaceful terrains that invite you to slow down and fully immerse yourself. There’s a quiet, contemplative energy throughout. Rather than sharp detail or contrast, Fraval builds her landscapes through layered gestures, allowing paint to bleed, shift, and reform. The result is a kind of visual stillness – deeply absorbing, and almost meditative.

To register your interest, please email: sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au