Kathryn Ryan

Sunshine Coast National Art Prize 2024 - Finalist

_{[Image courtesy of the artist and Nanda Hobbs, Sydney.]}

Artist Statement

We refine our visual language to succinctly translate our responses to the natural world and our human condition. It is a felt experience, translated using light, shade, tonal nuances, and the development of glazed surfaces, contrasting the intricate with the suggestiveness of space.  

The calmness of the studio and the practice of creating takes me to a quiet place.  

Revealing beauty and depth, an antidote to the intensity of our contemporary existence. The works are pared back, minimal, their reductive quality draws out what is essential, offering a contemplative and quiet space. In seeking the serene, time and reflection are brought to my observations of the natural world to find a nuanced beauty and depth.  

My works show a juxtaposition of strength and fragility, the intimate and the distant, the fleeting and the solid, played out through the treatment of shadow and light, simultaneously bold and subtle, precise and ambiguous.