Australian Women Artists

The podcast

Ep. 38 Robyn Sweaney

Robyn Sweaney is a contemporary artist who began exhibiting her work regularly from about 1992.

Her early work included still-life compositions, landscapes, and portraiture.

After relocating to northern New South Wales, she was inspired by her surrounds by painting houses. She could merge her philosophical interests with visual storytelling. And the paintings are beautifully reminiscent. But not in a ‘I prefer the old days’ sort of way. She just captures a moment.

More specifically... “Domestic dwellings divulge more than their mere exteriors, functioning as physical incarnations of the aesthetic, ideological and social structures influencing human behaviour. Informed by travel through familiar and unfamiliar rural and suburban places, Robyn finds that, ‘certain elements of place resonate an unexplainable reaction within me – something ignites deep within memory. The landscape is somehow opened up by the search itself and my response can reach beyond its visual appearance’.”

Her work has been described as emotional portraits of place, capturing the essence of lived experience through facades and fences.

Robyn has been involved in over one hundred group exhibitions. She was the winner of the Wynne Trustees’ Watercolour Prize, AGNSW (2019) and has been the finalist of many major awards including multiple times for the Wynne Prize, Salon Des Refusés, Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Prize, Mosman Art Prize, Paddington Art Prize, Moran Prize, Portia Geach Memorial Award and has also been a finalist in the Sulman Prize. Her work is held in public and private collections throughout Australia.

Head to the link in my bio for our podcast conversation

Images

RS image: Danny Sweaney, Oh Boy Agency

Dreams and Imaginings, 2024

acrylic on polycotton

40 x 50 cm, 42.5 x 52.5 cm

Endless Blue, 2024

acrylic on polycotton

50 x 70 cm, 52.5 x 72.5 cm

Out of the Blue, 2024

acrylic on polycotton

95 x 135 cm, 97.5 x 137.5 cm

Parts of the whole, 2025

acrylic on polycotton

50 x 70 cm, 52.5 x 72.5 cm