Australian Women Artists

Australian Women Artists

The podcast 
 
Ep 81 Jenna Lee
 
Jenna Lee is an artist whose work invites us to slow down and reconsider the stories hidden within the words and objects we often take for granted. 
A Gulumerridjin (Larrakia), Wardaman and KarraJarri woman with Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Irish and Scottish heritage, Jenna has developed a remarkable practice that works across sculpture, installation, paper, photography and moving image. 
She transforms books, archives and printed texts into beautiful and thought-provoking artworks that ask important questions...including who gets to tell history. 
Jenna's work has been recognised through numerous awards, including the 2024 Waterhouse Natural Science Art Prize, the 2023 Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award (Emerging Artist), the 2020 Wandjuk Marika 3D Memorial Award at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Awards (NATSIAA), the 2019 Dreaming Award presented by Creative Australia. She was even one of 5 shortlisted artists for the Venice Biennale for 2026. 
Jenna Lee has developed a unique and valuable artistic voice.

Jenna is represented by Mars Gallery, and some of her available works can be found at https://marsgallery.com.au/jenna-lee/
More works and info can be also be found at https://jennalee.art/about

Images
1 JL image by Anna Katsanevas
2 Instalation view of JL & Kojima Shouten's Balarr (To become light) 2023
3 White Grass Trees 1-3, 2021, pages of 'Aboriginal words and place names' bookbind thread, organic cotton thread, florist wire, glue, bookcover board 119, base 20 x 23 to 39 x 38
4 from HIStory Vessels exhibition, 2020, deconstructed pages of the Ladybird history book, 'The Story of Captain Cook'
5 To make light together 03, 2023, digital photograph 51 x 66

Just wanted to also drop a quick note here that I will be taking a few weeks off after this is published and wanted to say a heartfelt thanks for everyone’s support and encouragement thus far. I've enjoyed this immensely. I’ll be back in a few weeks with some very exciting guests and projects.

Australian Women Artists
 
The podcast
 
Ep 80 Tonee Messiah
 
I think it would be fair to say that Tonee Messiah’s work asks questions of you. 
 
It asks that you stand in front and notice how you feel. Her paintings have been described by her as living in the landscape of the mind. 
 
Tonee Messiah was born in Israel and spent her childhood moving between a kibbutz and coastal Australia, finally settling in Sydney at eleven. 
 
That experience of perpetual transition — of never quite arriving — became the foundation of one of the most quietly original painting practices in the country. 
 
She has a bachelor of Visual Arts with Honours from Sydney College of the Arts and a Masters of Fine Art from UNSW. Her work has entered the collections of Artbank and the Monash University Museum of Art, she collaborated with fashion label Gorman in 2022, and that same year won the Waverley Art Prize. She teaches painting at UNSW Art and Design and the National Art School.
 
Tonee is represented by @nicholasthompsongallery
Images
1. TM
2. A Fabricated Reflection, 2025 oil on poly cotton 122 x102
3. Essential Sensitivities, 2025, oil on poly cotton 102 x 76
4. Constructive Beliefs, 2025 oil on poly cotton 102 x 76
5. Slight Reposition on a Soft Decision, 2025 oil on poly cotton 122 x 107

Australian Women Artists
The podcast
Ep 79 Leah Thiessen
 
 Leah Thiessen is a painter whose work is deeply shaped by place, memory, and the living energy of the landscape around her. 
Leah has spent close to two decades turning a very special place in Northern NSW into one of the most distinctive bodies of work in contemporary Australian painting. 
But she didn't start there. She began her creative life in fashion design, before retraining through a fine arts diploma, and, much later, a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Southern Cross University. 
In 2008 Leah left Sydney's Northern Beaches for the Northern Rivers region, and it was there that her real subject found her. 
Her practice is both intuitive and deeply observant. Working through mark-making, scraping back, and layers of paint, Leah builds surfaces that feel alive with movement and feeling. Her paintings seem to capture the spirit of a place.
She's now represented by Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne, Despard Gallery in Hobart, and Lethbridge Gallery in Brisbane, with solo shows including Broadwater, Biome, and her most recent exhibition, Rustling Canopy. She's been twice named in the Top 100 Collectable Artists.
‘The course of painting is a primal impulse to mark. It is a physical and emotional experience. I paint in an expressive and gestural way capturing the force and energy of a place. I create a visceral experience through the use of mark making and the application of paint. My paintings are process driven and it is only through the act of painting over, scraping back and drawing into, that my work is resolved.’
 
Head to the link in my bio to hear the episode or search Australian Women Artists wherever you get your podcasts. 
Leah is represented by @flinderslanegallery, @despardgallery, @lethbridgegallery
 
Images of Leah's work to follow in the next post...

Australian Women Artists
 The podcast
 
Ep. 78 Evie Adasal
Evie Adasal is an artist whose practice has evolved — from photography and film through to painting, from direct landscape observation toward a more conceptually layered engagement with the environment. 
 She brings an unusually layered visual intelligence to her painting practice. Her work is rooted in abstraction, drawn from the cultivated landscapes of public gardens and urban green spaces, and built through a process of slow, meditative looking and careful, beautiful layering of colour.
 She continues to push the boundaries of how landscapes can be interpreted through abstraction. 
 Evie’s work ‘navigates the delicate balance between order and spontaneity, restraint and vibrancy. Her palette reflects this tension, as she moves between subtlety and intensity, bringing together elements that are both harmonious and disruptive’.
 For the past three years, she has also been awarded a number of shortlistings, including in prestigious national prizes such as the National Emerging Art Prize, Fisher’s Ghost Award, Hawkesbury Art Prize and the Georges River Art Prize, while winning the Anthea Polson Gallery Award at the Paddington Art Prize in 2023 and she’s very recently had a successful exhibition at Olsen Gallery in Sydney.
 
 
Evie is represented by Olsen Gallery, Sydney (@olsen_gallery) and can be seen from Sept 26 at @sydneycontemporary
 
 
For some available works copy and paste link below into your browser: 
https://www.olsengallery.com/exhibition/evie-adasal/
 
 
Images
1.   EA by Brett East
2.   I never promised you a Rose Garden, 2024, 180 x 150 (all paintings on carousel are synthetic polymer on poly cotton)
3.   D-XI, 2026, 120 x 130
4.   D-I, 2026, 120 x 130
5.   D-X, 2026, 130 x 140
6.   D-XV, 2026, 60 x 60

Australian Women Artists
 The podcast
 
Ep 77 Dani McKenzie
 
 Dani McKenzie’s story begins, unusually, not in an art school studio but in a bedroom — where, after a formative trip through Europe and a chance encounter with the work of Belgian painter Michaël Borremans, she spent six months teaching herself to paint. 
That instinct and passion carried her into the National Art School in Sydney, where she completed both her undergraduate and Master of Fine Art degrees, and where her enduring fascination with photography — memory, privacy, and the lives of strangers — first took shape.
Early in her career, Dani worked from found photographs, creating imaginative worlds conjured from those images. But it was the ubiquitous disruptions of 2020 that changed everything. Forced to slow down, she began walking her own neighbourhood in inner-Melbourne, photographing it at night, and turning her lens — quite literally — on her own life and surroundings. 
The results are a stunning body of work. Paintings of glowing windows, quiet streets, and private moments caught in public space, executed with a photographic precision that somehow still feels deeply human.
Dani is represented by PIERMARQ Gallery, Sydney, MARS Gallery, Melbourne and Long Story Short Gallery (Los Angeles, Paris, New York) and has held solo exhibitions in Paris, Los Angeles, Sydney and Melbourne.

Dani mentions being influenced by Clarice Beckett. You could copy and paste this link into your browser to hear a conversation I had with Jennifer Higgie on Clarice:
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/australian-women-artists/id1794012822?i=1000695950466

Head to the link in my bio to have a listen to our conversation. Alternatively, search Australian Women Artists wherever you find your podcasts. 
 

Images
1.   DM image supplied by artist
2.   Waiting For You, 2022, oil & acrylic on linen 
3.   Waiting for Gelato, 2021, oil on masonite 
4.   That Little Italian Place on the Corner, 2022, oil & acrylic on linen 
5.   Room With a View, 2023 oil & acrylic on linen 
6.   Closing Time I, 2023, oil & acrylic on board 
7.   Date Night, 2024, oil & acrylic on linen 
8.   The Final Hour, 2025, oil & acrylic on linen