A celebration of natural beauty, Riptide brings together works across Luke Shadbolt’s exhibitions Maelstrom, 2016-2018, Spéirling, 2020, and The Terminator Line, 2022. In this exhibition, we see the ferocious sculptural ferocity of the ocean, but also its delicate, fragile beauty, emerge through Shadbolt’s skill with the camera.

Both Maelstrom and Spéirling act as witnesses to the turbulent tussle in nature between creation and destruction. Waves are frozen in grand moments, caught at the apex of their explosion. The stillness of the photograph, contrasting against the violent movement of the ocean, creates a moment of sculptural liminality. Like primordial dancers, white foam flies across the horizon, springing and tumbling, crashing out of sight only to soar towards the havens in a split second.

Inspired by the work of Impressionist painter J.W. Turner, The Terminator Line engages in a deft interplay between light and movement, bending the dappled light in the waves to create sublime moments of painterly beauty. It is impossible not to get lost in the waves, caught in the undulating pulses of shape and form that weave throughout Shadbolt’s works.

In bringing these works together, Riptide highlights the contrasts that are so central to Shadbolt’s work. The cycles of beauty and chaos, of creation and destruction. In these works exist primordial rituals that represent an innate humanity within all of us. A connection between light and dark, and the beauty that binds it all together.

Lauren Jones is a visual artist based on the Sunshine Coast. Working primarily in oils, her feminine portraits and still life scenes speak of moments captured in time. Lauren’s works, executed with bold and immediate brushstrokes, are evocative and impressionistic. Her art exquisitely showcases the materiality of paint and celebrates the process of painting.

Born in 1989 in Queensland, Jones earned a Bachelor of Arts (Creative Literature) from the Sunshine Coast University in 2009, and in 2012 a Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) from Monash University.

Currently Jones works from her art studio in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland, Queensland.

Coastal New South Wales–based abstract painter Ash Leslie joins our summer group exhibition, Quiet Tide, with a suite of works shaped by quiet intervals, intuitive gesture and the atmospheres of the shoreline she calls home. After nearly a decade in graphic design, Leslie rediscovered painting during maternity leave with her first daughter, developing a practice forged in the margins of the day – rigorous, intimate and unmistakably her own. “Working intuitively, I lose myself in translucent washes of oil paint, allowing my subconscious to guide me,” she says. “As the impression emerges, I let the piece rest somewhere between recognition and obscurity.”

Themes of motherhood and the natural world ripple gently through Leslie’s paintings, infusing their layered surfaces with tenderness, tension and a searching emotional clarity. Her approach – embracing chance, discovery and the quiet revelation of form – lends each work a drifting, tidal quality that sits in perfect harmony with the contemplative spirit of Quiet Tide. Recognised nationally with finalist selections in the Paddington Art Prize, Flow Art Prize and Signature Art Prize, Leslie continues to establish herself as a singular voice in contemporary abstraction.

Read our interview with Ash Leslie below. For private previews and priority access to works from Quiet Tide, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au

Explore more from Quiet Tide HERE.

Shoalwater-based contemporary painter Nicole Steenhof joins our summer group exhibition, Quiet Tide, with a new series of paintings that emerge directly from her daily encounters with the sea. Propelled by an ongoing interest in ocean studies, Steenhof works towards an embodied painting process “alert to sensations beyond sight”, she says, developing ideas about how we might engage with “the agential life of the sea with tenderness, to relearn connection.” With this new collection, walking and swimming become quiet rituals of observation, informing subtly abstracted seascapes that hold a tension between what is seen and felt as the water shifts with the moon, light and seasonal currents. “Swimming is an anchor,” says Steenhof – a way for bodies to enter the sea and let “the motion of the saltwater dissolve edges.” This experience distilled is into subtle, tidal canvases that sit perfectly within the contemplative spirit of Quiet Tide.

Read our interview with Nicole Steenhof below. For private previews and priority access to works from Quiet Tide, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au

Explore more from Quiet Tide HERE.

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is embracing the season’s slower rhythms and channelling the salubrious calm of being by the sea with our summer group exhibition Quiet Tide. Now on view at our Newport gallery, Quiet Tide brings together three luminaries of contemporary painting – Dalin Alejandrino, Ash Leslie and Nicole Steenhof – who each, in their distinct ways, wade through abstract painterly currents to articulate their emotional connection to water.

Eschewing more recognisable figurative cues in favour of feeling, these artists take fluid gestures, layered markings and tonal washes as a visual language to express the sensory pleasure of an ocean plunge, the elemental heft of breaking waves and the dreamy atmosphere of halcyon days adrift in a waterside idyll.

From Steenhof’s meditative odes to oceanic calm and Alejandrino’s feather-light abstractions of blissful moments abroad to Leslie’s softly charged studies of shoreline light and colour, each work in Quiet Tide reads as a painterly paean to water – its rhythms, its clarifying stillness and its endless power to slow us, restore us and draw us back to nature’s pace.

All works from Quiet Tide can be previewed and acquired by request in the lead-up to the show’s official opening on Thursday, 4 December. To request a preview catalogue, book a private viewing or secure an early acquisition, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au

Eora/Sydney-based abstract painter Dalin Alejandrino joins Quiet Tide with a new body of work shaped by memory, movement and the tender interplay between motherhood and making. A self-taught artist, Alejandrino works instinctively with translucent layers, subtle textures and free-flowing colour, creating feather-light abstractions that hover between her inner and outer worlds. “Each layer is a memory, each mark an emotion,” she notes – an approach that lends her paintings a serene, drifting quality perfectly attuned to the contemplative spirit of Quiet Tide.

For this series, Alejandrino draws on recent travels and moments of quiet clarity abroad, inviting viewers “to reflect on their own relationship with time and those precious moments we hold dear.” Sunlight dancing on an English creek, a warm summer in Puglia with her young family, and a gratitude-filled walk along the beach in Salento become emotional anchors, distilled into soft sweeps of colour and gentle tidal movements. A 2024 Fisher’s Ghost Art Award finalist with works in private collections in Australia and internationally, Alejandrino brings a quietly luminous, lyrical voice to Quiet Tide.

Read our interview with Dalin Alejandrino below. For private previews and priority access to works from Quiet Tide, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au

Explore more from Quiet Tide HERE.

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is pleased to present A Season of Giving, a curated Christmas gift guide highlighting beautiful, original paintings and ceramics from the gallery stockroom that capture the spirit of the season. From backyard barbecues to bush-side beach walks, summer surf and sunlit scenery, these works celebrate the pleasures and rituals that make Christmas truly special.

A Season of Giving is arranged into three curated collections, offering something to suit every budget and style while simplifying gift-giving for the aesthetes, art lovers and avid decorators in your life with a considered selection of unique pieces. Encompassing abstraction and landscape, still life and figuration, the guide celebrates the diversity of artworks at Michael Reid Northern Beaches.

A gift for a friend – Ceramics are among the most varied and characterful expressions of contemporary art-making. They bring beauty off the walls and into the home, creating sculptural moments that shape and enliven a space. Our first collection focuses on tactile, three-dimensional forms, presenting clay works alongside sculptural figures by First Nations artists working with Maningrida Arts & Culture. Thoughtfully selected pieces in this collection – priced at $500 or less – offer a spirited and accessible way to share your love of art this Christmas.

A gift for the family – Paintings distil stories into moments, capturing fragments of lived experience with intimacy and charm. Conor Knight’s Lamb Chop pays homage to the backyard barbecue; Jo White’s surf scenes honour the exhilaration of summer waves. This collection, with works priced at $1,000 or less, spotlights the imagination and vitality of emerging and mid-career painters – art that becomes part of family life and memory.

A gift for yourself – This final selection brings together smaller works by some of the gallery’s most beloved artists, including Emily Gordon, Nicola Woodcock and Melanie Waugh. These intimate paintings offer luminous impressions of the Australian landscape, their deft brushwork capturing the radiance and stillness of long summer days. Priced between $1,500 and $2,500, these pieces are ideal for collectors seeking a meaningful, collectable addition to their home or a seasonal moment of self-gifting.

To discuss works from A Season of Giving, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Northern Beaches are delighted to present our first solo exhibition from Boorloo/Perth-based contemporary painter and former National Emerging Art Prize finalist Jasmine Raisbeck, Suburban Stories.

“This series explores fleeting, tender moments from suburban Australian life – children running through the sprinkler, a dad and daughter at the bowls club, a girl waiting for her paddle pool to fill,” says Raisbeck, who, in addition to her NEAP nod, has been a finalist in many other major awards, including the Naked and Nude Art Prize. “These quiet scenes, drawn from old and new photographic references, are part of an ongoing investigation into how we connect with the past and the people who shaped us.”

The deeply human approach to visual storytelling that feels evident in Raisbeck’s bright, snapshot-like scenes is one she connects with her previous career in journalism – years spent interviewing Australians from all walks of life and telling their stories. Her journalistic eye, empathy and narrative sense are now channelled into images at once nuanced and idiosyncratic, yet somehow universally resonant in their wistful call-back to slow, hot, halcyon days in the suburban backyard. “I’m interested in the emotional weight of ordinary moments and the way a certain light, gesture or expression can trigger deep nostalgia,” says the artist. “I play with heightened contrast and colour to amplify mood and create space for the viewer to see their own story.”

Raisbeck describes Suburban Stories as a reflection on the beauty of everyday life, the joy of childhood, and the subtle complexity of family relationships. “The series invites viewers to reflect on their own histories,” she says, “the summers of their youth, the people who raised them and the rituals that shaped their sense of place.” 

In Contours of Being, expressive and voluptuously abstracted forms are rendered in a rich palette of earth tones and deep greens with chalky pastel highlights that sweep across the canvas and sketch out elegant, sporty and sinuous silhouettes. While discussing her new body of work, which follows her successful solo debut with the gallery in early 2024, Dubina notes a line from Anaïs Nin: “I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.”

In this spirit, Dubina takes a more introspective approach to the female form with Contours of Being. “In earlier works, I focused on process and on marking specific periods of life. Now, I’m less concerned with narrative and more interested in what the form itself can express,” says the artist, moving freely between areas of striking, graphic flatness and more nuanced shading that brings a sense of warm tactility.

“This series is a study of the female form as a way of expressing emotion, rather than individual portraits of a body. Each curve and line is used to communicate a different state of being that can hold more than one voice. Moving between presence and absence, power and fragility, silence and declaration, viewers are invited to bring their own perceptions and experiences, shaping how each piece is understood.”

Like Anaïs Nin’s reminder that there are “many women” within one, my figures become layered selves, shifting and transforming, showing the fluidity of identity while maintaining a sense of unity through a shared colour palette.”

For all enquiries, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au

The Shape of Us is a study on shape, space, and quiet presence. Ceramics and paintings converse in arcs, planes, and edge, pared back to their essential geometry. In this distilled clarity, the everyday and the imagined converge, leaving only pure, quiet form.

Suzy O’Rourke is a multidisciplinary artist and ceramicist based on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.  With a background in millinery and interior design, Suzy’s creative practice explores the intersection of nature, form and simplicity, expressed through both handcrafted ceramics and original artworks. Her work is ground in a deep respect for natural materials and quiet design. Each piece presents an invitation to pause, connect and bring a sense of calm and beauty into everyday life. Drawing inspiration from architecture, the natural works and the emotional quality of space, Suzy’s aesthetic is minimal yet expressive, refined and yet organic. Whether working in clay or on canvas, Suzy creates with intention, guided by texture, tone and the quiet power of restraint.

To celebrate the announcement of Brenton Drechsler‘s representation by Michael Reid Northern Beaches and Michael Reid Southern Highlands, we recently sat down with the South Australian artist and two-time National Emerging Art Prize (NEAP) finalist to discuss the ideas, inspirations and experiences that have shaped his distinctive approach to painting.

“I seek out compositions that connect to my personal narrative as a queer person – whether through intimate depictions of interiors, vintage cars in foreign places or landscapes that reflect my real and imagined heritage,” says Drechsler, whose star turn in NEAP’s 2023 edition led to his first solo exhibition with Michael Reid Southern Highlands – a creative triumph that was met with widespread acclaim and has since been followed by two more solo presentations, including his sold-out Newport debut, Stripes 3 (Alternative Views). “When I paint, I feel as though I am embedding myself into each painted environment with a renewed sense of belonging. This is also why I include a green and white stripe in every painting: it is my way of saying, ‘I was here. I exist. This is who I am.’”

Alongside our interview with Drechsler, we are pleased to present a special release of seven vibrant new streetscapes that beautifully distil the painterly signatures for which he is now widely celebrated. “I call it my Neapolitan Series,” he says of this ebullient body of work, which arrives ahead of another significant milestone – his forthcoming showing in our flagship Eora/Sydney gallery’s year-end group survey, Painting Now. “It is about lightening up, embracing optimism for the future, and letting go of the past, with grief and self-deprecation.”

“Brenton Drechsler’s practice makes me smile,” says Michael Reid OAM. “His paintings, often set against a heavily urbanised world, are subversively populated in this series with freedom machines – the Porsche, the Land Rover, the Kombi van and the Volvo station wagon. All are nostalgically drawn from an earlier era, each quietly longing for the freedom of the bush or the open road. What enriches this warm, multi-layered visual language is Drechsler’s painterly touch: colour-soaked, paused streetscapes filtered through a personal lens, where cars exist as vessels of memory and longing.”

To discuss works from Brenton Drechsler’s latest series or sign up for first access to his future projects, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is pleased to present Pulse by Jeannie Holker, who was awarded the highest honour for a ceramics artist at last year’s National Emerging Art Prize. Befitting the leafy environs of The Garden Gallery on the grounds of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens, Holker’s beautiful new series of large-scale ceramic sculptures invites fresh perspectives on how we relate to nature by plugging into the little-perceived frequencies that reverberate through the non-human world.

“Pulse is a collection that explores interspecies communication,” says the artist, who sculpts her scrolling, spiralling forms, fossil-like seedpods and totemic insect deities on a scale that conveys primordial heft and monumentality, albeit tempered by the weathered surfaces and nuanced effects wrought by the firing process.

“The ecosystems we inhabit are constantly exchanging information. Our capacity to perceive these interactions is shaped – and often limited – by our Umwelten: sensory frameworks and assumptions rooted in our own perspective. The living world emits a continuous pulse, a signal transmitted and received through an intricate web of sensory experiences.”

Guided by field research and beginning with drawings, photographs and found elements before letting her themes slowly cohere, Holker describes her process as intuitive and driven by storytelling. “I embrace imperfections as part of the narrative,” she says. “Each piece captures a moment or idea made tangible through clay.”

Holker triumphed at NEAP 2024 with Giant Pill Millipede, which connected the evolutionary endurance of ancient, elemental forms with both the vicissitudes of her medium and a sense of human resilience in the face of hostile environments. She now returns with an ambitious body of work that similarly binds conceptual rigour with a sense of natural wonder.

“I hope my work opens a window into the deeper concepts that shape how we connect with the natural world,” says Holker. “I want viewers to feel renewed sense of wonder and appreciation for the complexity of life – its beauty, fragility and constant transformation.”

To preview and discuss works from Pulse by Jeannie Holker, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to welcome back one of the stars in our stable of represented artists, Emily Gordon, who returns to Newport with Paddington Stories. This dazzling new body of work builds on the creative triumph of her previous solo show, which similarly traced the distinctive topography and historic character of the titular inner-city enclave and was shown to great acclaim at our flagship Eora/Sydney gallery last year.

“I spent much of 2024 exploring the stepped maze of streets and alleys that traverse and connect the many pockets of Paddington,” says Gordon, who was raised in Oakland, California, and now divides her time between inner-city Sydney and Gunning, NSW. “My base is the city, and while I had a general familiarity with the area, I was looking to delve into a more intimate understanding.”

In Paddington Stories, Gordon beautifully captures the eclectic jumble of Victorian rooftops and gelato-toned terraces that spill over the suburb’s slopes. Bathed in golden light and the shadows of fronds and flowering trees, Gordon’s elegant house facades, quiet backstreets and beautifully rendered architectural details are interspersed with glittering Sydney Harbour glimpses.

“For my previous show, The Paddington Project, I was hunting for expansive moments of revelation that would translate into larger-scale compositions,” says the artist. “Along the way, I catalogued moments of sunshine, humour, colour and form – snapshots better suited to the smaller board sizes I work with most often: windows into my adventures on foot, an outsider taking notes on my journeys.”

This visual archive informs Paddington Stories, a series that distils moments of delight and intrigue from her city walks. “The architecture and flora will look familiar to locals, but each work tells a story that might take an unexpected twist,” she says. “Rhythm and light, atmospherics and drama remain central preoccupations.”

To discuss works from Paddington Stories or sign up for first access to future releases from Emily Gordon, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au

In Echoes of Matter, Naarm/Melbourne-based artist Ben Liney offers a quiet yet powerful exploration of landscape painting through a distilled perspective on time, memory, and our place within the natural world. Working on the lands of the Bunurong people, Liney renders isolated geological forms in oil on canvas with a restrained palette and finely detailed brushwork.

These works do not depict expansive vistas, but instead focus in on solitary rock forms—elements of the landscape that endure across time. Stripped of their surrounding context, they become vessels of accumulated memory, marked by the slow, persistent forces of transformation. Through careful observation, Liney invites viewers into a more attentive way of seeing—one that mirrors the quiet persistence of the landscape itself.

His paintings are grounded in stillness and intimacy. They hold space for reflection, drawing out the quiet dialogue between matter and time, between place and presence. In doing so, Echoes of Matter positions landscape not as a passive backdrop, but as an active archive of change—one that subtly reflects our own shifting relationship to the world around us.

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to present our first full-scale solo exhibition from 2024 National Emerging Art Prize winner Xanthe Muston at The Garden Gallery on the grounds of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Garden. Beautifully realised over the course of a year-long mentorship with Michael Reid Galleries, which formed part of her prize when she named Overall Winner of the Morgans Financial Prize for Emerging Painters, works from Muston’s Two Person Book Club series are now available to view and acquire online and at The Garden Gallery.

Influenced by her PhD studies in English Literature, Muston takes the written word as a starting point to create her narrative-rich scenes. For Two Person Book Club, the artist began by inviting her sitters to share a favourite poem, short story or novel, letting their collaborative discussion shape the resulting work.

“Together we created a composition that recasts the chosen narrative scene to contemporary Australian life,” says Muston, whose series is nested with allusions to a library of texts: from Madame Bovary, Leaves of Grass and Atonement to Australian author Jessica Au’s 2022 novel Cold Enough for Snow. “I seek to show how the edges between the mediums of painting and words are not barriers, nor boundaries, but bridges.”

In doing so, Muston upends the relationship between words and pictures, reversing the act of describing art in words – the literary device known as ekphrasis – so that her paintings give new life and resonance to classic, beloved books. “From Homer and Virgil to Keats and Wilde, authors have engaged in a dialogue with artists for different reasons and in different depths. My paintings explore this relationship in reverse: the visual description of a work of literature,” says Muston. “This exhibition asks, what are the narratives that stay with us? And how might the visual depiction of literature exceed straightforward illustration?”

By celebrating the pursuit of reading and inscribing her modern-day subjects into well-known stories, Muston reveals the collaborative possibilities of something we might imagine as solitary and pays tribute to the communities we build around the writing we hold dear. Awash with beautiful blues and enriched by dazzling details, Muston’s work draws fresh and compelling connections between reality and the page.

“I’m interested in what happens when painting becomes a form of reading,” says Muston, who, in addition to her NEAP triumph, has received the Lane Cove Emerging Artist Prize and the Tim Olsen Drawing Prize, and was shortlisted for the Mosman Art Prize. “Every painting is a joint act of interpretation. The sitter becomes a co-author. Together, we imagine the scene anew.”

To discuss works from Two Person Book Club by Xanthe Muston, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au

“Haven’t you ever happened to come across in a book some vague notion that you’ve had, some obscure idea that returns from afar and that seems to express completely your most subtle feelings?”

– Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary.

‘In Full Bloom’ is a radiant celebration of spring’s awakening, featuring a curated collection of floral artworks that capture the delicate beauty and bold spirit of the season. This spring edit exhibition brings together contemporary and classical interpretations of botanical subjects — from vibrant wildflower landscapes to intimate studies of single blossoms.

Each piece showcases the unique voice of the artist, exploring themes of renewal, fragility, growth, and joy. Whether rendered in impasto, oil, oil pastels, or lino-cut, the works pulse with life, inviting viewers to pause and reconnect with nature’s quiet wonders.

We are excited to introduce our Northern Beaches audience to first time Northern Beaches exhibitors, Zaide Harker and Peta West. Joining them are familiar names from our Newport gallery program, including Northern Beaches–represented artists Melanie Waugh and Kathryn Dolby and previous exhibitors Nicola Woodcock, Kerri Kerley and many more. To discuss works from the collection, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au

The works presented in this exhibition explore significant influences throughout my life, especially those inspired by nature, travel, a passion for antiques, and the study of birds and botany—essentially a journey through natural histories. This collection reflects my fascination with these themes.

Translating these historical illustrations into my work felt like a natural progression. By combining them with studies and images from different eras, I aimed to craft a cohesive narrative that functions as a kind of botanical and ornithological archive—a collection that comments on time itself, on the things we collect, Heirlooms and our memories of the past. This process led me to contemplate the meaning behind such endeavours and, more importantly, how to make these studies resonate in a contemporary setting.

My trips through numerous antique shops uncovered the pervasive nature of memory and memorabilia. It evokes nostalgia, reminiscent of visits to a grandmother’s house filled with cherished ornaments displayed on walls, shelves and cabinets. Our urge to collect and preserve meaningful items mirrors the act of displaying these recorded elements of nature.

Our connection to the environment, our consumption habits, and the memories we cherish are incredibly powerful. This body of work acts as a thoughtful reminder of the environmental crisis we face. The core message of this endeavour highlights the urgent plight of many bird and plant species hanging on the brink of extinction.

Offering a luminous antidote to the season’s chill, the Michael Reid Northern Beaches team has curated a refined selection of new and collectable paintings for our special online exhibition, Winter Salon. From emotionally charged and joyously expressive landscapes that channel the gentler rhythms of the coast in its quieter months, to pieces whose vibrancy, quietude and embrace of interior subjects provide visual pause and delicate appeal, each work in this collection will bring elegance, verve and originality to the spaces they inhabit.

Representing some of the most beloved and in-demand names in our Northern Beaches stable and from across the broader Michael Reid network, the thirteen extraordinary artists joining forces for our 2025 Winter Salon include award-winning Dharawal/Wollongong-based contemporary painter India Mark, whose exquisitely composed, richly detailed and intimately scaled still-life paintings balance elegant restraint with a quiet intensity expressed via fiery underpainting.

Joining her are familiar names from our Newport gallery program, including Northern Beaches–represented artist Emily Gordon and previous exhibitors Anh Nguyen, Nicola Woodcock, Louise Knowles, Kate Vella, Emily Cullinan, Jennifer Ross, Meg Walters, Suzie Riley and 2024 National Emerging Art Prize Award of Excellence recipient Drew Truslove. Completing this dynamic assembly are Joanne Sisson, James Lai and Eleanor Pursglove – three exciting talents whose work we are thrilled to present for the first time at Michael Reid Northern Beaches.

Winter Salon is presented exclusively online and is not physically on display at our Newport gallery. To discuss works from the collection, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au.

Now bringing radiant bursts of colour and rhythmic movement to the gallery, Beyond Form is a dynamic group show uniting three key voices in West Australian contemporary painting: Jordy Hewitt, Kate Dolan and Sara Winfield. Joining forces for a painterly celebration of abstraction’s expansive emotional possibilities, this talented trio’s new work unfolds across two rooms at Michael Reid Northern Beaches throughout August.

Pushing past the seen world and eschewing the figurative in favour of feeling, each artist contributes a distinct visual language to our Beyond Form. Whether through gossamer hues, gestural brushstrokes, intuitive markings or raw surfaces, their works treat abstraction as a means of navigating lived experience.

Jordy Hewitt’s work traces interior states and embodied experience, drawing on “life meaning, symbolism and energy” to arrive at a distilled emotional essence. Her paintings are intuitive and searching: “Everything I observe and experience is processed and regurgitated in the works and shows me something about where I’m at.”

Kate Dolan approaches her canvases instinctively, often starting with pastel gestures and letting the piece to evolve via movement and mood. Her colour fields and graphic linework offer snapshots of emotional time, shaped by experience and fleeting encounters with colour in the world around her. “Whatever is happening in my life is reflected in my paintings. I try not to plan too much – I just let them happen.”

Sara Winfield brings a raw physicality to Beyond Form, layering oil stick, sand, sawdust and paper to create textured surfaces that speak to the tension and beauty of female experience. Her work is grounded in personal narrative – a navigation of motherhood, identity and the competing demands of care and freedom. Her work offers “a reflection of my inner world… the tension between chaos and calm.”

To discuss works from Beyond Form, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to present our first solo exhibition from contemporary painter Brenton Drechsler — a rising art star and two-time National Emerging Art Prize finalist who has followed up his NEAP success with two acclaimed solo shows at our Southern Highlands gallery.

Titled Stripes 5 (Alternative Views), Drechsler’s latest body of work offers a fresh window into his distinctive, psychologically rich interior scenes and streetscapes — quiet, observational, colour-soaked works filtered through a queer and deeply personal lens.

Born on Kaurna Country in Campbelltown, South Australia, Drechsler draws on his personal history to build paintings that balance stillness with vibrancy and visual complexity. Each composition feels paused in motion — a lingering moment of ambiguity and reflection. Cars sit parked, interiors hum with memory, and built environments become vessels for mood and meaning. His approach to surface, gesture and layering produces canvases that are atmospheric and unguarded, inviting open interpretation.

“I’m interested in how paint can create a sense of dislocation or opacity,” says Drechsler, who began his creative career in fashion design before turning to visual art, attaining a Bachelor of Visual Art (Honours) at Adelaide Central School of Art and winning the Hill Smith Art Advisory Award. “The cars and interiors feel familiar but distanced — spaces that carry emotional meaning but remain out of reach.”

A recurring motif throughout Drechsler’s work is his green-and-white stripe — a graphic, sometimes partially hidden proxy for the artist himself. “It’s a kind of non-human alter ego,” he explains in a profile published by Belle magazine alongside his Southern Highlands solo debut. The stripe serves as both a painterly signature and a metaphor for queer experience — visible yet obscured; by turns exuberant or discreet.

While autobiographical in tone, Drechsler’s paintings resist overt confession. His use of layered oil paint, blurred detail and oblique subject matter lends the work an open-ended quality, prompting viewers to enter with their own associations and memories. The stripes becomes a stand-in for that subjectivity — a subtle presence in a staged world of paused motion and shifting emotional weather.

To discuss works from the series, please email northernbeaches@michaelreid.com.au