Artist’s Statement

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 Barnett studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts Printmaking at The Victorian College of
the Arts, Melbourne 2002-2004; a Bachelor Fine Arts Honours - Printmaking, RMIT,
Melbourne, 2006; a 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. Barnett 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.