About Nicola Newman
I'm a contemporary Australian artist living and working on the unceded land of the Juru people of the Birri Gubba nation in North Queensland, Australia. My practice explores the relationship between interior experience and the natural world through painting.
The Work
I've long been drawn to seascapes and coastal landscapes, shaped by years of sailing Australia's east coast—first as a child, then cruising full-time for three years in my late thirties. Now based in North Queensland, I continue to sail local waters, and this lived experience with the ocean deeply informs my work.
Working primarily in oil paint, I'm drawn to a specific stage in its drying—when it becomes tacky and offers resistance. At this point, I can push the paint with real force, creating edges where atmospheric forms merge and dissolve, building translucent layers where light appears to shift through the scene. I move fluidly between abstraction and representation, exploring those fleeting transitions—the way light, weather, and coastal conditions create moments between states.
Since 2008, I've incorporated excerpts from my personal diaries as titles for my paintings, creating a quiet tension between the visual experience of place and the reality of our interior worlds—we can stand before the most beautiful landscape yet find our minds somewhere else entirely.
Background
I hold a Bachelor of Fine Art from Queensland College of Art, Griffith University (2005). My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including in solo exhibitions at regional galleries such as Caloundra Regional Gallery, Logan Art Gallery, Redland Art Gallery, and Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery, as well as commercial galleries in Melbourne, Brisbane and New South Wales.
My work is held in public collections including Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery and Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital, and corporate collections including Lendlease, The Star, and Metlink.
Now in my forties, with more stability and a sense of being anchored, I paint because it connects me to something larger than the constant noise of our busy and chaotic world. Nature has always offered me that—perspective, space, a way back to presence. Sharing these paintings is my way of offering that same possibility to others.
PROFESSIONAL BIOGRAPHY
Nicola Newman (née Chatham) (b. 1982, Victoria) is a contemporary Australian artist whose practice explores the relationship between interior experience and the natural world through painting, printmaking, and writing.
Living and working on the unceded land of the Juru people of the Birri Gubba nation in North Queensland, Newman's practice has been fundamentally shaped by a lifelong relationship with sailing Australia's east coast—first as a child, then living aboard for three years full-time in her late thirties. She gained her Bachelor of Fine Art from Queensland College of Art, Griffith University (2005), and prior to that, a Diploma of Visual Art from Southbank Institute of TAFE.
Since her first solo exhibition, Townsville to Tasmania: Coastal Impressions (2002), Newman has exhibited across Australia and internationally. Her work is characterised by an investigation of landscape as psychological space. Since 2008, she has incorporated excerpts from personal diaries as painting titles, making visible the gap between where our bodies are and where our attention travels—creating tension between the visual experience of nature and the reality of our wandering interior worlds.
Solo exhibitions include Beyond the Horizon, Art Piece Gallery, NSW (2013); It Was a Strangely Happy Day, Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne (2011); My Morning Ritual, Caloundra Regional Gallery (2011); Between Here and There, Logan Art Gallery (2010); Cohuna Diaries, Anita Traverso Gallery, Melbourne (2009); With or Without Drought You, Redland Art Gallery (2009); and Over the Garden Fence, Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery (2008).
Her practice also includes wood engraving, watercolour, and writing, with recent book arts projects including illustrating poetry collections You Will Find Your Way and Nature Told Me a Secret for poet Naomi Arnold, and authoring The Seasonal Journal for Creative Hearts.
Newman received the Espresso Garage Award in the Thiess Art Prize (2006) and has been shortlisted for numerous awards including the Stan + Maureen Duke Gold Coast Art Prize (2007), Redland Art Awards (2006, 2016), Artworkers Award (2006), Churchie Emerging Art Award (2006), and City of Albany Art Prize (2016). She was awarded an Arts Queensland Presentation and Development Grant (2008). International exhibitions include the Örebro International Video Art Festival, Sweden (2008).
Her work is held in public collections including Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery and Royal Brisbane & Women's Hospital, corporate collections including Lendlease, The Star, and Metlink, and private collections in Australia, England, the United States, and New Zealand. The State Library of Queensland and Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts have published catalogue essays written by Newman.
Earlier in her career, she co-directed Moreton Street Spare Room Projects (M.S.S.R.), an artist-run initiative that received a $50,000 Arts Queensland grant to produce a three-part documentary series featuring contemporary Australian artists including Tony Albert, Eleanor and James Avery. She has been featured in Profile Magazine, Australian Country, and GQ Australia, and interviewed on podcasts including Why Not Art, in-Between, and Mojo Radio Show.
Newman is currently developing work for a proposed joint exhibition with Dr. Paula Payne, exploring themes of water, voyage, attention, and memory—marking a full-circle moment 25 years after Payne first taught Newman to paint.