The Exhibition That Started a Journey

Looking back at my first solo exhibition and towards what is coming next

There are paintings that belong to a particular moment in an artist's life.

And then there are paintings that begin something.

My first solo exhibition "New Perspectives", held at Double Oaks Estate in Lancefield from 24–27 November 2023, was a little bit of both.

At the time, I was simply incredibly proud to bring together my first significant body of work and share it with people who had followed my journey. Looking back now, I can see something I couldn't quite see then.

The exhibition was the beginning of a creative thread that is still unfolding in my studio today.

A thread about place, belonging and the way the landscapes we love become part of us.

And, perhaps, about the person we become when we finally find our way home.

A very special place to begin

Double Oaks Estate holds a special place in my story, and I am enormously grateful to Travis and Kristy for making my first solo exhibition possible.

They were renovating their cellar door at the time and worked incredibly hard to have it finished especially for the exhibition.

The transformation was beautiful.

What had been a renovation project became the perfect setting for the paintings, surrounded by the landscape that had inspired so much of the work in the first place.

There was something wonderfully fitting about exhibiting there.

I had moved to country Victoria only a few years earlier, and now I was standing in a beautiful country cellar door, surrounded by paintings that had grown directly from my connection to this landscape.

It felt like I had arrived somewhere.

(the original invite to my exhibition)

The paintings were about belonging

The original body of work explored women immersed in the Australian landscape.

Figures appeared to blend into hills, trees and open country. They weren't simply women standing in a landscape. They were becoming part of it.

The idea behind the work was one that had been growing inside me for some time:

The places we have been don't simply stay behind us. In some way, they become part of who we are.

For me, that idea is deeply connected to growing up in the country.

I have always carried a strong connection to land with me, even through the years when I lived elsewhere and my life took me in very different directions.

Moving to Lancefield in 2020 re-ignited that connection.

It was as though something I had forgotten was suddenly waiting for me here.

First, I found peace.

Then I found belonging.

I found people who became genuine friends, connections that felt real and generous, and a community where life seemed to have a little more room to breathe.

And somewhere in amongst all of that, I began to find myself again.

(sketching ideas)

Finding the artist who had been waiting

Creativity had always been part of me.

As a child I loved drawing, and my grandfather was an oil painter. I spent time around his paintings and his easel, and those early experiences stayed with me.

In my twenties I loved pastels and even taught small beginner classes.

But then a major life tragedy happened, and something inside me went quiet.

I continued to create in other ways. I photographed weddings. I designed clothing. I found other creative outlets.

But nothing really lit me up in the same way.

Then, after settling into Lancefield, something unexpected happened.

One night I dreamed about a painting.

The next morning I went to the cottage where my old art supplies had been stored. I found my grandfather's easel, pulled out my pastels and painted the image I had seen in my dream.

It was magical.

It was also the beginning.

I had found a door that had been closed for a very long time.

I opened it.

And I stepped through.

(this is the painting that started me on my current journey)

Learning to paint

I started with pastels because that was the medium I had loved in my younger years.

But they didn't quite fulfil me anymore.

I felt a pull towards paint.

I wanted to understand colour. I wanted to know how to mix it, how to build it, how to make it sing.

And because my grandfather had been an oil painter, oil felt like the natural place for me to go.

Teaching myself was not easy.

I remember ringing my friend Andrew Plant in Melbourne, an extraordinarily talented illustrator and acrylic painter, and asking him how to mix colours.

His advice was something along the lines of, get two colours and go for it.

I'm fairly sure he thought I was slightly mad.

So I did.

I read books. I watched countless YouTube videos. I studied. I experimented.

And I practised.

Then I practised some more.

In March 2022, I made the enormous decision to leave my part-time job and become an artist full time.

That meant learning much more than how to paint.

I had to learn discipline.

I had to make myself show up every day. I had to keep painting when something wasn't working. I had to accept that the paintings in my head were sometimes far ahead of what my hands could currently make.

But I believed I could get there.

So I practised until my hands began to catch up with my imagination.

I still have so much to learn.

I hope I always do.

But I was finally on my way.

(this piece is one of my very early pastels from my early 20's)

Becoming Shay

There was another part of that journey happening at the same time.

For most of my life, I had never felt completely aligned with the name Sharon.

I had searched for years for a name that felt truly mine.

Then one afternoon at Budburst, our local wine festival, I met some new people and, somehow, the conversation came around to my name.

One of the beautiful women I was talking to casually said,

“Why don't you call yourself Shay?”

It was like a light had shone on me.

Shay.

It felt perfect.

From that day, I started calling myself Shay.

Over time I moved completely away from Sharon, eventually changing my name legally. The people who know me and truly care about me now call me Shay.

It feels like me.

And perhaps that is why the idea of becoming has such a strong place in my work.

Because I have experienced it myself.

(this is one of my favourite paintings, before the change in technique)

Learning to become more creative

I was fortunate to have wonderful mentors along the way.

Tricia Taylor in Queensland gave me a beautiful grounding in composition and process. She is incredibly kind and patient and remains a wonderful inspiration.

Robin Stewart encouraged me to stay true to my own creative voice and has always been generous with encouragement.

Kirsty McIntyre was also an important early influence, generously sharing her experience of building an art career and always being so open, encouraging and supportive as I found my own way as an artist.

I also had the opportunity to attend a workshop with Colley Whisson, where I learnt more about working with oil paint in a way that would ensure my paintings were archival and made to last.

But one of the biggest shifts in my practice came from my dear friend Samantha Gardiner.

A few years into painting, I was actually quite happy with the work I was producing.

But something was missing.

I couldn't quite explain what it was.

I felt as though I wasn't being creative enough.

I think this is one of the hardest things about being self taught: you don't know what you're missing until you find it.

And if you don't know what to look for, you can miss it completely.

I looked at Sam's work and her process and saw an incredible sense of creativity.

So I asked her:

“How do I become more creative?”

Her answer was to show me her studio.

In particular, she showed me her bucket of brushes.

Except they weren't really brushes.

They were all sorts of wonderful, unexpected tools she used to make marks. She saw everything as a potential way of making art.

It was a light bulb moment.

I went home and made myself a rule:

I wasn't allowed to use a paintbrush.

Instead, I had to find other ways to apply the oil paint.

I experimented with all sorts of things.

And something changed.

Taking the brush away forced me to stop thinking about what a painting should look like and start thinking about what I could make it do.

I became more playful.

More curious.

More willing to experiment.

And, most importantly, I became more myself.

My work became richer and more layered. Texture became increasingly important. Marks became more expressive.

I began to feel that my personality was present in the paintings in a way it had never been before.

I loved it.

And I still do.

(these two paintings were done days apart, you can see the change in my approach here when I made a second attempt with not paint brushes allowed)

Looking back at Double Oaks

When I look at the paintings from my first solo exhibition now, I see where I was.

I see the beginnings of ideas that are still incredibly important to me.

I see the women in the landscape.

I see the feeling of connection.

I see the country that had given me back something I didn't realise I had lost.

But I can also see the beginning of the artist I was becoming.

The exhibition wasn't the end of that story.

It was a marker along the way.

A moment when I could step back and say:

This is where I am now.

And then keep going.

The thread continues

The idea behind that original body of work has never really left me.

If anything, it has become more meaningful as I have continued to paint.

Because I now understand that place isn't simply geography.

It can be memory.

It can be childhood.

It can be the people we meet.

It can be the experiences that shape us.

It can be the landscape that makes us feel peaceful enough to finally hear our own voice.

And sometimes, a place can become so deeply woven into us that it is impossible to separate the person from the landscape that helped shape them.

That is the thread I am following again now.

A new body of work is beginning

There is a new series of paintings quietly taking shape in my studio.

Once again, figures are finding their way into the landscape.

But I am not returning to the paintings of 2023.

I am returning to the idea.

Five years of painting, experimenting, learning and growing have changed the way I see both landscape and myself.

The work is more textured now.

More layered.

More instinctive.

More playful.

And perhaps more personal.

The figures are emerging from a different place within me, too.

They carry everything I have learnt since that first solo exhibition, the years of practice, the experiments with mark making, my love of texture, my connection to country and the quiet understanding that we are all shaped by the places and experiences we carry with us.

I don't know exactly where this new series will lead.

And that is part of the excitement.

For now, I am following the thread.

Painting.

Experimenting.

Listening.

And allowing the work to reveal itself.

Perhaps that is what becoming really is.

Not arriving at a finished version of yourself.

But continuing to grow into the person you were always meant to be.

And I have a feeling there are some very special paintings waiting just around the corner.

(A selection of the work in my exhibition "New Perspectives")