Elizabeth Barnett

Elizabeth Barnett’s vibrant still life paintings introduce exotic and visually compelling botanicals to domestic scenes of treasured objects, books and furniture. This introduction gives new dimension to Barnett’s intimate still life scenes.

Her subjects do not sit flat upon the canvas, but instead reach up from it, enlivened by the wild and natural world. This liveliness belies the ‘stillness’ of still life painting and along with Barnett’s painterly gestures of shadow, line and colour creates a visual dynamism reaches beyond tradition. Barnett’s revisioning of tradition, similarly plays to perceptions of domesticity and daily life. Far from a sense of duty or routine, there is an implicit celebration of the everyday in Barnett’s work. In a bustling cosmopolitan world Barnett draws her viewer into scenes of daily life at her Macedon studio and its bushland surrounds, offering a gentle and wondrous escape.

Elizabeth studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts Printmaking at The Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne 2002-2004, Bachelor Fine Arts Honours – Printmaking, RMIT, Melbourne, 2006, Masters of Arts- Illustration, Camberwell College of Art, London, 2008-2009 and was awarded the Collie Print Trust scholarship at the Australian Print Workshop in 2006. Elizabeth founded Schoolhouse Studios Inc with Alice Glenn in 2010, a not-for-profit artist studios complex in the former St. Joseph’s Technical College in Abbotsford. Elizabeth is a committee member and producer for the Kyneton Contemporary Art Triennial.

Elizabeth lives in the Macedon Ranges where she works from her home studio.

All images on this site are copyright Elizabeth Barnett 2024. Please ask permission to use my images before using them for any purpose. Thank you!

I respectfully acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which I live, make and exhibit work. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and future.