| Artist | Liz Gridley | Resides | Australia |
| Website | lizgridley.com.au | Mediums | Oil |
| Print Shop | lizgridley.com.au/shop | lizgridley@gmail.com | |
| Representing Gallery | Beinart Gallery Brunswick VIC, Australia Wow X Wow Online Gallery Quirky Fox Hawera, New Zealand Victorian Artists Society Melbourne, VIC, Australia | Themes | Death Psychological Emotion Allegory Memento Mori Spirituality The Body Women Myth Contemporary Realism Figurative Portraiture |
| Follow the Artist | Instagram | Facebook | Press | lizgridley.com.au/press |
About the artist
Liz Gridley is a realist oil painter from Melbourne, whose work centres on ‘hyper-emotion’—distress triggered by overstimulation and physical overwhelm from external stimuli that cause a physical response in the body. Though her recent diagnosis with ADHD has shed light on Gridley’s emotional nature, ‘hyper-emotion’ remains a core element of her personality and sense of self.
Gridley has recently shown her DeathCare focused pieces in ‘Still Bodies: Dialogues of Deathcare’ at Beinart Gallery. Using the seductive aesthetics of the female nude as bait, I want to draw the viewer into difficult territory. The beauty of these figures cannot soften the fact that death is often unjust, hidden, or forced upon the young and vulnerable. Advocacy in death care cannot remain confined to the elderly or terminally ill. Death is as relevant to all as birth, and it demands the same attention, clarity, and choice.
She has been a Finalist in a number of awards including the Lester Prize, Kennedy Art Prize, Cliftons Art Prize, the Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Art Prize, and the fortyfive downstairs Emerging Art Prize. Gridley was recently a resident in the “2024 Inaugural Victorian Artists Society Coterie” sponsored by the Hansen Little Foundation and won their ‘Featured Artist Award’.
Artwork Themes & Subject Matter
Since 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.
Liz is enamored by expressing her 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.
Gridley is now pursuing further community based education around Death care and has recently completed workshops with the Australian Home Funeral alliance, hosting a Death Cafe at her solo exhibition ‘Still Bodies: Dialogues of Deathcare’ with Beinart Gallery and attending online peer discussions with The Order of the Good Death: Immersing herself in the deathcare space, learning from industry leaders about rights, responsibilities, and new technologies has shaped her expression on themes of how we die and how we care for others through the process.
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 |
| 2026 | Solo exhibition: “Objects are Relics” | Victorian Artists Society Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
| 2027 | Solo exhibition: “Yet to be announced” | Beinart Gallery Brunswick VIC, Australia |
CV
Education
2024
Instruction with Lucy Maddox, Jen Fyfe, Hugues Scheid, Zoya Trofimiuk
(Victorian Artists Society)
2019
Instruction with Robin Eley, David Jon Kassan & Shana Levenson (Art Academy, Adelaide)
2018
Workshop with Robert Knight (Ringwood Art Society)
2017-2018
Mentorship with Joe Attard (Ringwood Art Society)
2016
Workshops with Rhonda Gray (Bairnsdale and District Arts Society)
2015
Pro Make-up Artistry Certificate, KRYOLAN Australia, Melbourne, VIC. Australia
2011
Bachelor of Visual Arts (Honours), Monash University, Churchill, VIC. Australia
2010
Bachelor of Visual Arts, Monash University, Caulfield, VIC. Australia
Awards & Residencies
2025
Exhibition Winner, (Joint with Marija Patterson)Summer Exhibition, Victorian Artists Society, Melbourne, VIC.
2024
Winner, Featured Artist Award, Victorian Artists Society Coterie Residency & Mentorship sponsored by the Hansen Little Foundation, Melbourne, VIC. Australia
Finalist, The Almenara Art Prize, Spain
Finalist, The Lester Prize, WA.
Inagural placement in the Victorian Artists Society Coterie Residency & Mentorship sponsored by the Hansen Little Foundation, Melbourne, VIC. Australia
2023
Finalist, Kennedy Art Prize, SA.
2022
Finalist, Tacit Still Life Prize, VIC. Australia
2021
Finalist, Tacit Still Life Prize, VIC. Australia
2021
Finalist, Kennedy Art Prize, SA.
2019
Growing Pains Initiative Residency, Burrinja Gallery, Upwey, VIC.
1st Prize: Painting, 2nd Prize: Drawing, Life Model Society Inaugural Art Prize Gasworks Arts Park, VIC.
Finalist, Rick Amor Self Portrait Prize, Monsalvat, Eltham.
Finalist, INPRNT Traditional Art Award: Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize, United States.
2018
1st Overall, ‘Forgery’ Art Show at the Ringwood Art Society, Ringwood
2017
Winner Major Prize: Body of Work, 2nd: Best Painting, Commended: Drawing
Graeme Hildebrand Art Prize, Red Gallery, Fitzroy North.
Finalist, fortyfivedownstairs Emerging Art Prize, Melbourne.
2010
Winner Tolarno Painting Prize 2010, Monash University (Prize: $1000).
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2025
Still Bodies: Dialogues of Deathcare, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, Australia
2018
Empathy, my witness, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, VIC. Australia
2013
Tactile perception-experimenting with flesh, arcYinnar, Yinnar, VIC. Australia
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025
Norma Bull Scholarship Award Exhibition, Victorian Artists Society, Melbourne, Australia
Fifty/50, New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale, NSW, Australia
Resilience, Quirky Fox Gallery, Hawera, New Zealand
Women Painting Women IV, Burrinja, Upwey, Australia
Antipodes 2025, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, Australia
2024
Small Works 2024, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, Australia
Myth, Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco, United States
Microvisions 7, WOWXWOW, Scotland (Online.)
Chaos & Tranquility, WOWXWOW, Scotland (Online.)
Antipodes 2024, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, Australia
2023
Mini Mix & Match, Quirky Fox Gallery, Hawera, New Zealand
Toddlerpillars, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, Australia
Otherworldly and Wild, WOWXWOW, Scotland (Online.)
Small Works 2023, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, Australia
Beyond Original, Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco, United States
Antipodes 2023, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, Australia
2022
Cornucopia, WOWXWOW, Scotland (Online.)
Looking Up, Realm, Ringwood, Australia
The Portrait Show X, Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco, United States
Joy Seekers, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, Australia
Antipodes 2022, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, Australia
2021
Human Condition, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, Australia
Wish You were Here, Sally Centigrade Gallery, Lakewood Colorado United States
Light & Shadow, Maroondah Federation Estate, Ringwood, Australia
2021
Women Painting Women III, Burrinja Gallery, Upway, Australia
2020
Resurrection, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, Australia
Strange Bedfellows, Quirky Fox Gallery, Taranaki, New Zealand
Midnight Garden, Modern Eden Gallery, San Francisco, United States
TRUE FORM, Black Spot Gallery, Mornington, Australia
Antipodes 2020, Beinart Gallery, Brunswick, Australia
2019
Winter Days – Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood, Australia
Don’t Blame Pandora – Growing Pains Residency, Burrinja Gallery, Upwey Australia
A Portrait of a Painter, Off the Kerb Gallery, Collingwood Australia
