Amy Dynan: Artist Statement & Bio

"I use the framework of beauty to explore the relationship between humanity and nature. My large-scale pastel paintings merge photorealism with abstract sensibilities to document moments of sublimity, transition and fragility in nature. The dynamics of light and dark work as a metaphor for the opposing forces in nature and in ourselves, creating landscapes that hover between land and sky, material and ethereal.

For me, drawing is a lens through which the spectrum of our existence is revealed, and a means to marvel at how lucky we are to feel it fully. To this end my work documents nature in flux and celebrates the beauty of what we stand to lose.”  

Sydney Contemporary '25 - 'Flight of the Sirens'

Amy Dynan brings her unique vision to Sydney Contemporary with Flight of the Sirens, a new body of work presented by Stanley Street Gallery. This evocative series reimagines the mythological siren as a meditation on transformation, freedom, and the untamed human spirit.

In Flight of the Sirens, viewers are invited to see through the eyes of the siren in flight. Large-scale pastel paintings— dramatic in scope and saturated in colour—unfold as emotional cartographies, mapping thresholds between inner and outer worlds, the seen and unseen. Shaped by longing, liberation, and the quiet reclamation of emotional space, these works hold both stillness and wildness at once.

Rooted in ancient Greek mythology, sirens were once seen not as mermaids, but as enigmatic, half-bird, half-woman figures whose songs spoke of deep knowledge and transcendence. Over centuries, the siren was recast as a symbol of danger and seduction. Here, she is reclaimed as an archetype of the feminine psyche in transition—a rising into sovereignty.

Dynan’s visual language resists the urge to resolve light against shadow. Instead, her works allow beauty and longing, light and shadow, to coexist—mirroring life’s own tensions. Her mastery of pastel reaches new heights in this series: pigments are layered, luminous, and immersive, evoking vast aerial seascapes that are at once expansive and deeply intimate.

At its heart, Flight of the Sirens is a celebration of perspective. It invites us to look not with fear, but with wonder and courage. In reclaiming the siren’s gaze, Dynan offers a potent symbol of liberation, transcendence, and connection to the wild, ever-changing forces within and around us.

Amy holds a Master of Contemporary Art and Master of Fine Arts from The University of Sydney. Amy has been
a finalist in numerous prizes including the Dobell Drawing Prize, Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize, JADA Art Prize and John Leslie Landscape Prize, and has been selected for residencies in France, Norway, Hill End, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Tweed Regional Gallery and Bundanon Trust (William Fletcher Scholarship).

Represented by Stanley Street Gallery since 2014, Dynan has presented four solo exhibitions; Flight of the Sirens (2025), Sublime (2023), Skytalk (2021) and Water (2019).

Amy Dynan is an award-winning artist, renowned for her nuanced balance between conceptual rigour and classical skills.

Amy's paintings are rich in sublime imagery and draw on various periods throughout art history including Impressionism, Surrealism, and Abstraction. For Amy, the question in art is not what is sublime but how do we access it? Her work explores how we encounter sublime moments and the reverence that emerges through relationship with nature. Permeating her work is a love for the Australian landscape—the clarity of light, the boundlessness of sky, and the classic burnt colours of country.

Amy holds a Master of Contemporary Art and Master of Fine Arts from The University of Sydney. Amy has been a finalist in numerous prizes including the Dobell Drawing Prize, Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize, JADA Art Prize and John Leslie Landscape Prize, and has been selected for residencies in France, Norway, Hill End, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Tweed Regional Gallery and Bundanon Trust (William Fletcher Scholarship).

Amy has held four solo exhibitions at Stanley Street Gallery, 'Flight of the Sirens' (2025), 'Sublime' (2023), Skytalk’ (2021) and ‘Water’ (2019).

Artist Portrait by Milly Mead

Amy Dynan: CV August, 2025 Download

Denis Clarke: Artist Statement & Bio

Painting for me is a bodily thing. It involves the relationship between one’s self and making contact with the tactile. Why tactile? Because I am touching materials and feeling out my experience of looking at a subject such as landscapes, people and buildings.

Drawing is the whole key. Not drawing for its own sake but drawing to explore ideas for connecting with the world. Finish is irrelevant. These drawings serve the purpose of the painting and illuminate my imagination to the possibilities of new compositions. I am interested in the physicality and directness of drawing which often finds its way into my works on paper as well as my paintings.

My interest is what I would call 'creating a process of informed experiment'. I allow myself to risk and play with media while aligning my senses with the observed. It is the otherness or feel of a subject which provides the impetus to experiment and find new solutions with mark.

For me, working before a subject is deeply complex and a chance to explore visual language. The test is to find graphic statements and abstractions which truthfully parallel perceptions and travel towards a resolved image. Previously Unseen explores my reactions and connection with the urban which has been an important aspect of my painting for many years. It is a reference to my wish to try and see the world anew.

Denis Clarke works across painting and drawing, exploring the relationship between himself, the bodily and the tactile. Interested in creating a process of informed experiment, his paintings extend conversations of subject, texture and paint fluidity that suspend perception and reality. His work layer playful exchanges between drawing and painting processes, finding new solutions with mark-making to explore the subject. Contextualised within the European neo-expressionist movement, Clarke’s colourful gestural works deconstruct improvisation, inviting new and playful languages of representation.  

Clarke completed post-graduate study at St Martins School of Art, London, and received the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship as well as Moya Dyring residency at the Cite International des Arts in Paris. 

Based in Sydney, he has spent periods working and studying in London and Switzerland, teaching at the Camden School of Art and the Hampstead School of Art, exhibiting at Gillian Jason Gallery, Boundary Gallery and James Colman Gallery, Knightsbridge, as well as creating set designs and costumes for the experimental Opera Factory, in Zurich and London. 

Clarke returned to Australia in 1998. 

He has held 17 solo exhibitions since 1975 and has collaborated with several premier arts organisations such as Opera Factory in London and Switzerland, Warwickshire Arts Festival in the UK, and most recently as the artist in residence at Wollombi Valley Arts Council. From 1999 - 2010 Denis was a sessional lecturer at the National Art School and tutor from 2011 ongoing. He also instructs master classes at Charles Sturt University, the University of Southern Queensland, the Mitchell School of Art and the McGregor School.  

Clarke has exhibited in numerous Art Fairs including ‘Line Art, Ghent’, The Brussels Art Fair, The 20th Century British Art Fair, Royal College of Art, and The Islington Art Fair. His work is included in private and public collections including: the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Fitzwilliam College Cambridge and Lloyds of London. 

Clarke has been represented by Stanley Street Gallery since 2014.

Denis Clarke: CV July, 2022 Download

Sally Simpson: Artist Statement & Bio

Sally Simpson draws inspiration and materials from specific sites in order to capture our moment in time, a period of rapid change with anxieties about the future, she states. Her working process begins as time spent on site, contemplating and collecting. Transformation of collected materials acts as a metaphor for the state of flux and transformation of the sites she engages with.

Her intention is to represent the present for an unknown future museum. She creates objects which belong to a continuous cross cultural tradition of humans attempting to influence and manage the forces that affect the world around them. Simpson says she creates objects that belong to a continuous cross-cultural tradition - humans have and continue to attempt to influence and manage the forces that affect the world around them.

Simpson’s work reflects her fascination with the way values and meaning, assigned to land and the environment, change over time according to point of view, culture and situation. She uses unexpected methods to transform natural and man-made materials found at particular sites, creating sculptures that evoke artefacts and specimens and drawings that reflect the fragility of the environment.

Her process draws on the tradition of humans making sense of the natural world through making artefacts and drawings with local materials.

In 2014 she travelled to Lake Gregory/Parraku in northern WA with a group of artists and writers. This lake system is the site of the oldest artefacts in Australia, and presents a variety of cultural, archaeological and environmental layers.

Simpson began her studies at the South Australian School of Art in 1982 and completed her BA at the College of Fine Arts in Sydney. She was the recipient of the Meroogal Women’s Art Award in 2006 and the ANU Student Drawing Prize in 2007.

Her Master of Philosophy in Practice-Led research in Sculpture at ANU School of Art was informed by materials and influences from her life on a small farm near Berry, New South Wales and participation in Contested Landscapes (2010), a field studies project run by the Environment Studio at ANU, focusing on Lake Mokoan near Benalla, Victoria.

She currently lives on a small farm on the outskirts of Canberra.