Finalist, Calleen Art Award 2026
Cowra Regional Art Gallery, NSW
I am honoured that my painting, A Web of Sunny Air, has been selected as one of 56 finalists in the 2026 Calleen Art Award.
One of Australia’s longest running art prizes, the Calleen Art Award is a national acquisitive painting prize established in 1977 to celebrate originality, creativity, and excellence in contemporary Australian art.
A Web of Sunny Air was exhibited in the Calleen show at the Cowra Regional Art Gallery.
The 2026 finalists' exhibition was open from 6 September to 18 October, 2026.
A Web of sunny Air, 2026, Oil and ink on canvas, 122 × 41cm
A Web of Sunny Air
A Web of Sunny Air forms part of my body of work about the relationship between landscape and memory. With its extreme perspective looking up with childhood eyes through sunlit bush, this painting is about how nature’s sights, smells, and sounds are a powerful source of emotional connection. This intense childhood experience of place, while seeming fleeting, echoes throughout our adult lives in memories.
The title borrows from Charlotte Brontë’s description of siblings bonding as they explore the natural world together, their imaginations running wild:
“We wove a web in childhood, a web of sunny air.”
