“I’m interested in the stories we inherit around femininity, and the truths that live beneath them."
b. 1976, Gosford, Australia
Lives and works on the Gold Coast, Australia
Llewellyn Skye, known simply as Skye, is an Australian contemporary visual artist working across painting, drawing and installation. Known for her expressive abstractions and distinctive use of colour, gesture and material, her practice explores the complexities and contradictions of feminine experience.
Nature has long operated as both subject and language within Skye’s work. Flowers, plants, the body, domestic objects and recurring symbols move between abstraction and recognition, becoming vehicles through which she considers femininity, inheritance, expectation and lived experience.
Her work is driven by tensions rather than resolutions: the polished and the unruly, strength and vulnerability, control and wildness, what is revealed and what remains hidden. Increasingly, her practice moves beyond the individual painted surface through repetition, objects, symbolism and installation, allowing works to exist in conversation with one another and form larger environments.
Skye has exhibited widely in more than 60 exhibitions, including 13 solo presentations, with highlights including Sydney Contemporary, HOTA Gallery, Curatorial +Co, Lennox St. Gallery and Wagner Contemporary. She has undertaken artist residencies in New York and Italy, experiences which have further expanded her relationship with materiality, place and process.
Her work was recognised as a finalist in the 2024 King’s School Art Prize and included in Here and Now as part of the Gold Coast Triennial at HOTA. Previous recognition includes the Fenton & Fenton Rising Talent Award and the ALA Abstract Artist Award, with her work held in private and public collections across Australia and internationally.
Skye holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Art School, Sydney, and maintains an evolving, research-led studio practice from her Gold Coast studio.
b. 1976, Gosford, Australia
Lives and works on the Gold Coast, Australia
Llewellyn Skye, known simply as Skye, is an Australian contemporary visual artist working across painting, drawing and installation. Known for her expressive abstractions and distinctive use of colour, gesture and material, her practice explores the complexities and contradictions of feminine experience.
Nature has long operated as both subject and language within Skye’s work. Flowers, plants, the body, domestic objects and recurring symbols move between abstraction and recognition, becoming vehicles through which she considers femininity, inheritance, expectation and lived experience.
Her work is driven by tensions rather than resolutions: the polished and the unruly, strength and vulnerability, control and wildness, what is revealed and what remains hidden. Increasingly, her practice moves beyond the individual painted surface through repetition, objects, symbolism and installation, allowing works to exist in conversation with one another and form larger environments.
Skye has exhibited widely in more than 60 exhibitions, including 13 solo presentations, with highlights including Sydney Contemporary, HOTA Gallery, Curatorial+Co, Lennox St.Gallery and Wagner Contemporary. She has undertaken artist residencies in New York and Italy, experiences which have further expanded her relationship with materiality, place and process.
Her work was recognised as a finalist in the 2024 King’s School Art Prize and included in Here and Now as part of the Gold Coast Triennial at HOTA. Previous recognition includes the Fenton & Fenton Rising Talent Award and the ALA Abstract Artist Award, with her work held in private and public collections across Australia and internationally.
Skye holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Art School, Sydney, and maintains an evolving, research-led studio practice from her Gold Coast studio.
Exhibitions & Awards
Solo Exhibitions
2026 Blood, Milk & Honey, Curatorial + Co, Sydney
2024 Between Ocean and Tree, Wagner Contemporary, Sydney
2024 Idle Hours, Lennox St. Gallery, Melbourne
2024 So Baroqué, Lethbridge Gallery, Brisbane
2023 Chasing Romance, Sydney Contemporary Art Fair | Wagner Contemporary, Sydney
2022 Calm Down Baby, Fenton & Fenton, Melbourne
2022 They Once Felt Like Water, Wagner Contemporary, Sydney
2021 This Is A Love Story, Revival Art & Design, Brisbane
2021 Hue To Hold, Metro Gallery, Melbourne
2020 Daylight Breaks, Revival Art & Design, Brisbane
2020 Bleeding Daylight, M-Arts, Murwillumbah
2019 Latest Works, Revival Art & Design, Brisbane
2012 Sugar, Conzano, Italy
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 Summer Salon | Little Treasures, Lennox St. Gallery, Melbourne
2025 The Colour Between, Curatorial Debut, Brisbane
2025 Launch, Curatorial + Co, Sydney
2025 Spring 1885 Art Fair, Lennox St. Gallery, Melbourne
2025 Brookfield Place Art Project, Curatorial + Co, Sydney
2024 Murmurs and Roars, UA Residency, Brooklyn, New York
2024 Here and Now, GC Triennial, HOTA, Gold Coast
2024 Action In Abstraction, Wagner Contemporary Gallery, Sydney
2024 Kings Art Prize, Sydney
2024 Annual, Atelier Ava, Brooklyn, New York
2024 Lennox St. Summer, Melbourne
2023 Spring Jardin & Falling Flowers, Grainger Gallery, ACT
2023 Summer Exhibition, Wagner Contemporary, Sydney
2023 Abstraction, Collectors' Focus Series V, Metro Gallery
2022 December Group Show, Lethbridge Gallery, Brisbane
2022 Landscape: Collectors' Focus Series II & IV, Metro Gallery, Melbourne
2022 40/40 Project, Wagner Contemporary, Sydney
2022 Large Scale Works, Wagner Contemporary, Sydney
2022 Metro Summer, Metro Gallery, Melbourne
2022 Summer Salon, Lorraine Pilgrim Gallery
2021 Christmas Group Show, Wagner Contemporary, Sydney
2021 Gallery Group Show, Wagner Contemporary, Sydney
2021 Spring ’21, Fenton & Fenton, Melbourne
2021 The Romantics, ALA, Southport
2021 Rising Talent, Fenton & Fenton, Melbourne
2021 Kaleidoscope, Revival Art & Design, Brisbane
2021 All Eyes On The Arts, Lorraine Pilgrim Gallery
2020 Art Knows No Borders, Lorraine Pilgrim Gallery & M-Arts
2020 Albion Gallery Opening, Brisbane
2020 Border Art Prize, Tweed Regional Gallery
2020 Modern Love, A K Bellinger Gallery, Inverell
2019 Summer Show, Metro Gallery, Melbourne
2019 Share The Dignity, Amber Creswell Bell, Sydney
2019 Summer, Lorraine Pilgrim, Gold Coast
2018 The Summer Show, Lorraine Pilgrim Gallery, Gold Coast
Permanent Collections
Randwick Children’s Hospital, Sydney
St Vincents Hospital, Sydney
Works held in private collections
Private commissions throughout Australia and Internationally
Public Commissions
2021 Southern Wild Co, Sunshine State Collection, NSW
2019 Main Beach Flower Festival, Mural, QLD
2019 RSL Art Union, Qld
2018 Robina Town Centre, QLD
2018 Nikel and Sole, Summer Collection, VIC
2017 Nikel and Sole, Winter Collection, VIC
Art Prizes
2024 Finalist, Here And Now, HOTA, Gold Coast
2024 Artist in Residence, UA International Residency, Brooklyn, New York
2024 Finalist, King's Art Prize, Sydney
2023 Finalist, 20 Best and Brightest, Home Beautiful, January
2021 Winner, Rising Talent, Fenton & Fenton, Melbourne
2021 Winner, Abstract Art Prize, Art Lovers Australia
2020 Finalist, Art Lovers Art Prize, Qld
2019 People’s Choice Award, Dean Cogle Portrait Prize, Dust Temple, Qld
2018 Artist in Residence, Burleigh Brewing, Qld
2018 Winner, Brewing Local Artists, Burleigh Brewing, Qld
2011 Artist in Residence, Italy
2008 Trees for Children, Sydney
2007 Xavier Art Space Prize, Sydney
2006 Finalist Arts North Permanent Collection NSW
2006 Showcase Prize Tafe NSW
2006 Highly Commended, Tafe Alumni Art Prize - Janice McCulloch - Art Almanac
2005 Highly Commended, John Olsen Drawing Prize, NAS, Sydney
Publications and Interviews
2024 Elle Global Woman, California
2023 Art Collector Magazine, Sydney Contemporary | Special Edition
2023 Art Collector Magazine, Sydney
2023 The Paddo Papers Edition, September
2023 Art Collector Magazine, January
2023 Home Beautiful Magazine, January
2022 AGNSW Magazine, May
2022 Art Collector Magazine, April
2022 Elle Global Woman, Fall Edition, California
2022 New Visionary Magazine, Brooklyn, NY
2022 Elle Foundation, California
2021 Visionary Art Collective
2021 The Block
2021 The Block Shop
2021 ALA Feature
2021 Fenton & Fenton, Melbourne
2021 Southern Wild Co, New South Wales
2020 Vanity Fair, UK, December
2020 House Rules, Australia
2020 The Block Shop, Melbourne
2020 We Are Gold Coast, Gold Coast
2020 Rising Woman Creative, France
2020 Tweed Valley TV, Tweed
2020 What’s On Tweed, Dec, Tweed
2019 The Echo, Dec, Byron
2019 The Weekend Edition Feb, Brisbane
2017 The Drift, July, Qld
2017 Robina Town Centre, Aug, Qld
2017 Fashion Journal, May
2017 Nikel + Sole, Nov, Melbourne
2016 Daily Imprint, Feb, Sydney
2011 Herbert River Express, June, Qld
2010 Sydney Morning Herald, May, Sydney
2008 Southern Courier, Nov, Sydney
2008 Coast Confidential, GC Bulletin, July, Qld
2008 Weekend Bulletin, June, Gold Coast
2008 Art Almanac, Profiles, June Edition
2008 Southern Courier, Feb, Sydney
2007 The Sun-Herald, March, Sydney
2006 Northern District Times, October, Sydney
2005 Daily Telegraph, November, Sydney
2001/02 NSW Stop Domestic Violence Week
2001 Front cover Speaking Out magazine, Sydney
Relinquishing Physics
If you were to visit Skye at work in her studio, there is a great likelihood you would discover her wearing a floral print not entirely dissimilar from her paintings. It’s a telling image—not just of sound sartorial choices, but of a painter who very much embodies her practice and subject matter, a painter who lives her work and whose work lives and moves and breathes as a result of the steadfast conviction that in a flower is the heart of life.
In the work is an urgent, even painful need to express the vitality that is Skye’s persistent source of inspiration. The most powerful articulations of the world’s beauty are often shot through with pain: loss, lost love, love unrequited, the uncertainty of change. The artist confronts these dangerous times with luminous bursts of creativity that wrest from the darkness a light of grace and salvation.
In this manner, Skye’s abstract works distance themselves from a canon of floral still lifes and landscapes and instead seize upon the rebellious energy of rock and jazz funk along with the lush, soulful atmosphere of modern R&B. Employing the sufficient amount of iconoclasm, vibrant pinks and shimmering marines can be recognized in parallel with deep, mysterious blues and greens, but all flattened and purified as they achieve distance from objective subject matter. Equally, while there are present on occasion serene patches of calm, there are also frenetic yet elegant whirls of pure light—as if a particle accelerator relinquished physics to paint flower petals.
Stillness in motion, tranquil turbulence: in the chaotic beauty of Skye’s painting practice are those golden paradoxical moments ever ready to guide us.
Written by
PENNYLANE SHEN
Artist Consultant, Curator & Educator
Director, Dazed & Confucius
Llewellyn Skye
Llewellyn Skye doesn’t like “pretty.” It is a surprising revelation, from an artist whose paintings most often take flowers as their inspiration. Yet any surprise quickly fades when one stands in front of her work. Here, Skye’s statement is realised with force. The painter’s brush produces a world, built upon dramatic abstraction and organic forms, where no idle prettiness is to be found. In her work, the potpourri of stale prettiness gives way to compositions that pulse with energy and movement.
Skye’s compositions do not represent flowers as much as they suggest some part of their essence. Her paintings hover in a liminal space, on the edge of legibility. “I like the idea that you think it’s a flower, but then also question whether it is one” she observes, when looking at one of her works. “The flower is a starting point that becomes more abstract as I go along.” This is part of the paradox that lies at the heart of each of her paintings, which start in an ordered manner, before this order is unapologetically undone. “First, I find the composition and then I start messing it up. It’s all about intuition and the feel of it.” Skye explains. “I’m interested in those little moments of shift in life and trying to capture that beauty in decay.” Optically, there is something of Joan Mitchell’s frenetic brush in Skye’s canvases; yet there is also some of the existential weight of the 17th-century Dutch still-life painters, who subtly suggested the transience of life with the slightest oxidation of a painted leaf. Skye’s paintings are spaces where such opposites—structure and chaos; abstraction and representation—collide and become suspended in a state of productive tension.
This is no accident. Indeed, one gets the sense that Skye is always actively searching for this very tension with her brush. “The moment that I think that there is something not quite right, in the painting, that’s when I like to leave it,” Skye explains. “The minute that I go past that point is when I’ve ruined it.” There is something both perplexing and intriguing in these words. Where other artists might seek to resolve their work at this point, and smooth out its aesthetic provocations, Skye sits with them and affords them time. “I don’t like perfection in my work,” she confesses to me. “I want there to be questions still in the painting. I like to let mistakes shine through and let them breathe.” Her paintings are not taxidermied records, but living, breathing, things.
There is a part of the artist written into each of her canvases. One can find both the history of Skye’s brush and the artist herself moving across the large expanse of each painting. “I work best large. I feel like when its large I can move,” she reflects. “Because I’m always moving as I paint, using my whole
body.” In this sense, her painted marks capture not only the form of the flower, but also the presence of the artist.
Of course, there is another history that also finds expression here: Skye’s training not only as a painter, but also as a sculptor. “Form is so drilled into me that I’m always thinking in the round,” Skye explains. “There are no straight lines in my work—I don’t do straight lines.” Instead, the artist imbues a three-dimensional weight and gravity within the two-dimensional boundaries of the canvas, yoking the two mediums together. As with the rest of her practice, Skye is more interested in following the pull of her intuition than conforming to artistic orthodoxies. I ask, “what is a typical painting session like?” She pauses, before replying: “nothing’s ever typical for me. I’m always just looking for new moments with each of my paintings.”
Written by
TAI MITSUJI
Writer and Art Historian
Disrupting the thematic and temporal modularity of art history
Exploring the Artistic Paradox
Born in Gosford, NSW, and raised in Sydney, Llewellyn Skye's artistic journey has been nothing short of remarkable. She completed a Bachelor of Arts at the National Art School and furthered her studies in painting at the Sydney Gallery School. Her artistic evolution has been shaped by her exploration of various mediums, including oil paint, acrylics, and sprays. It's within this exploration that she finds the tactile and expressive nature of paint, revealing shapes, colours, and textures beneath her brush, as well as the myriad of stories that unfold.
Skye's current collection, "Chasing Romance," is nothing short of dramatic. Her canvases are large, commanding attention and inviting viewers into her world of paradoxical emotions. As Tai Mitsuji beautifully puts it, "Skye’s paintings hover in a liminal space, on the edge of legibility." Her art challenges you to question what you see, to wonder whether it's a flower or something more abstract. This ambiguity is a deliberate choice that speaks to the heart of her work.
Skye's art is a journey into paradox. It begins in an ordered manner, a structured composition, but that order is unapologetically undone. She finds beauty in this chaos, capturing those moments of shift in life, and that fragile beauty that exists before change takes hold. Skye's intuitive approach, the dance of her body as she paints, imbues her works with a unique energy and depth.
Skye actively seeks this tension with her brush. She knows that the moment she feels something isn't quite right in a painting, it's time to leave it. Going beyond that point risks ruining it. Her art is a celebration of imperfection, where questions still linger on the canvas. She embraces mistakes and lets them shine through, allowing her paintings to breathe. They are not mere records but living, breathing entities, each with its own story to tell.
Llewellyn Skye's "Chasing Romance" is an invitation into a world of paradox, of beauty in art, and of imperfection embraced. Her art captures the essence of fleeting moments and the emotional complexities of life. As Skye eloquently puts it, "Florals represent the abstract beauty of life to me." Her journey through paint and canvas is a poetic exploration of the human experience, and "Chasing Romance" is an exhibition that promises to leave a lasting impression on all who encounter it.
Written by
MONICA LOFSTROM
Founder and Editor in Chief
EGW Global Magazine
Education
2011 Artegiro Residency, Montefiascone, Italy
2006 Advanced Painting Course, Sydney Gallery School, Meadowbank, Sydney
2005 Bachelor of Fine Arts, National Art School, Darlinghurst, Sydney
2025 Current Master of Visual Arts, QCA, Griffith, Southbank, Brisbane
