Amber Wallis
Amber Wallis resists the need to have her works understood, instead harnessing the dual forces of abstraction and figuration to navigate personal and conceptual terrain. Working at a large scale onto both primed and raw linen, layering colour loosely and quickly, the paintings take on an intentionally diffuse and mysterious quality.
“They demonstrate my desire to paint with technical limitations, where painting becomes an exercise in restraint and quiet consideration. They necessitate a delicate hand. I never allow the paintings to be over worked or laboured. What remains is a very conscious intention to leave images in their magical first conceptions. The paint is allowed and encouraged to stain, this process allows me to then expand my conceptual interests through the abstracted surfaces on the canvas.” Amber Wallis, 2022
Wallis holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Canberra School of Art and a Master of Visual Arts from the Victorian College of the Arts. In 2022, she was awarded the inaugural Wollumbin Art Award at Tweed Regional Gallery and previously won the Brett Whiteley Traveling Art Scholarship (2008). She has been a finalist in several art prizes including the Sir John Sulman Prize (2025, 2024), Bayside Painting Prize (2025), Geelong Contemporary Art Award (2024), Evelyn Chapman Art Award (2022), Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize (2019). She has completed residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris and the Nancy Fairfax Artist Residency at Tweed Regional Gallery. She has exhibited extensively since 2009 including in exhibitions at Ngununggula (2025), Ipswich Art Gallery (2024), Lismore Regional Gallery (2021, 2011), the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2008), the Ian Potter Museum of Art (2009).