| Artist | Liz Gridley | Resides | Australia |
| Website | lizgridley.com.au | Mediums | Oil |
| Print Shop | lizgridley.com.au/shop | [email protected] | |
| Representing Gallery | Beinart Gallery Brunswick VIC, Australia Wow X Wow Online Gallery | Themes | Psychological Emotion Allegory Memento Mori Spirituality The Body Women Myth Contemporary Realism Figurative Portraiture |
| Follow the Artist | Instagram | Facebook | Press | lizgridley.com.au/about |
About the artist
From an artistic interest spurred through Life Drawing sessions, Liz Gridley’s work centers on her emotional experiences of the human body, internal stresses, and how a painted human subject can affect the emotional state of the viewer.
Liz had her debut solo exhibition ‘Empathy, My Witness’ in 2018 at Off The Kerb Gallery following her Major Prize win at the Graeme Hildebrand Art Prize in 2017. She has been a Finalist in a number of awards including the Kennedy Art Prize, Cliftons Art Prize, the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Art Prize (USA), Fortyfive downstairs Emerging Art Prize, was awarded a commendation by judge Prudence Flint for her piece in the 2019 Rick Amor Self Portrait Prize. She was also a resident of the ‘Growing Pains Initiative’ Artists Residency at Burrinja Gallery in Upwey in 2019, creating oil paintings that spread organically across the gallery walls before demolition.
Liz has been awarded a place in the “2024 Inaugural Victorian Artists Society Coterie” sponsored by the Hansen Little Foundation in Australia. The residency will support her in mentorship, life painting sessions, and studio development time. She was also a resident of the ‘Growing Pains Initiative’ Artists Residency at Burrinja Gallery in Upwey in 2019, creating oil paintings that spread organically across the gallery walls before demolition.
Liz is currently working from her studio in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia).
Artwork Themes & Subject Matter
In Liz Gridley’s most recent work she has been utilizing female figures accosted by fantastical cloudscapes that envelope and interact with the figure. Influenced by realism with surreal colour, the pieces often analyze traditional themes from history and religion such as Allegories and Memento Mori. From 2023, Hunting for universal moments of human connection: the personal, inevitability of death & death care is a point in which discussion can be culturally celebrated or silenced. Here Liz’s experience with hyper-emotion is immune to medications and coping strategies and has space to allow for conversation that is otherwise often assumed knowledge or pushed aside as taboo.
Gridley is enamored by psychological conflict of external stressors on the body and finding visual catalysts for universal human connection between the portrait and viewer.
Vulnerability, fear, strength and consummation. Utilizing the language of high drama subject paintings, she pushes to look past the vagueness of beauty in representational painting and analyze how your external influences have elevated or plagued you in your own story.
Press
Liz Gridley’s paintings has been featured in notable magazine and online sources including Thamaray.co, ArtistsCan, Art Thy Neighbour, Weekend Notes, PoseSpace.com, Death Be kind: Exhibition Book.
Upcoming Exhibitions
| When | Exhibition | Gallery |
| May 2023 | Group exhibition: “Microvisions” | Wow X Wow Scotland, UK |
| June 2023 | Group exhibition: “The Portrait Show 11 -Beyond Original” | Modern Eden Gallery San Francisco, CA. USA |
| June 2023 | Group exhibition: “Memory Hive” | Wow X Wow Scotland, UK |
| July 2023 | Group exhibition: “Monochromagic 6” | Wow X Wow Scotland, UK |
| September 2023 | Group exhibition: “Small Works 2023” | Beinart Gallery Brunswick VIC, Australia |
| October 2023 | Group exhibition: “Otherworldly and Wild” | Wow X Wow Scotland, UK |
| October 2023 | Group exhibition: “Toddlerpillars” | Beinart Gallery Brunswick VIC, Australia |
CV
Education
2011, Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours), Monash University, VIC, Australia.
2010, Bachelor of Visual Arts, Monash University, VIC, Australia.
Solo Exhibitions
Empathy, my witness, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC, Australia.
Tactile perception-experimenting with flesh, arcYinnar, Yinnar, VIC, Australia.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2023
Renewal, WOWXWOW, Scotland (Online.)
Antipodes 2023, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, VIC, Australia
2022
Cornucopia, WOWXWOW, Scotland (Online.)
Spring Days, Off The Kerb, Collingwood, VIC, Australia
Substrate, Tacit Art, Collingwood, VIC, Australia
Looking Up, Realm, Ringwood, VIC, Australia
The Portrait Show X, Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco, CA. United States
Joy Seekers, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC, Australia
Antipodes 2022, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, VIC. Australia
2021
Human Condition, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC. Australia
Winter Days, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC. Australia
Wish You were Here, Sally Centigrade Gallery, Lakewood, CO. United States
Light & Shadow, Maroondah Federation Estate, Ringwood, VIC. Australia
Self, Off The Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC. Australia
Women Painting Women III, Burrinja Gallery, Upway, VIC. Australia
2020
Resurrection, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC. Australia
Strange Bedfellows, Quirky Fox Gallery, Taranaki, New Zealand
Midnight Garden, Curated by Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco, CA. United States
Let It Burn, Just Another Agency (Online), Australia
Art in Iso, The Stockroom Gallery, Clifton Hill, VIC. Australia
Off The Kerb Virtual & Offline, Collingwood, VIC. Australia
TRUE FORM, Black Spot Gallery, Mornington, VIC. Australia
Antipodes 2020, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, VIC. Australia
2019
OTK’s Christmas Show, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood VIC, Australia
12×12, The Stockroom Gallery, Clifton Hill, VIC. Australia
Winter Days, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC. Australia
Don’t Blame Pandora, Burrinja Gallery, Upwey VIC. Australia
A Portrait of a Painter, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood VIC. Australia
2018
12×12, The Stockroom Gallery, Clifton Hill, VIC. Australia
Unofficial Collaboration 2.0, The Stockroom, Ringwood, VIC. Australia
Winter Days, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC. Australia
Beautiful Banal, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC. Australia
2017
Dark Honey, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC. Australia
Subjects, Curated by Kathleen Ashby, Brunswick Street Gallery, Fitzroy, VIC. Australia
Brunswick Small Works Art Prize, Brunswick Street Gallery, Fitzroy, VIC. Australia
Glorious Gippsland Art Show, Bairnsdale & Districts Art Society, VIC. Australia
Peculiar Portraits Art Prize, Union Club Fitzroy, VIC, Australia.
