Artist Statement
The works are an ode to the staining and the materiality of feminism. 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.
I like to blur the lines between domesticity and erotic fantasy,interior space and landscape while allowing ambiguous or ghostly figures to also occupy space. I am interested in navigating my experience of being a woman and single mother. The psychological space of architecture from the 1970s handmade house movement references my early childhood living within an alternative utopian turned dystopian community in New Zealand, as well as my current place of residence in Northern NSW, the home of Australia’s first counter cultural communities.
Artist Bio
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 within institutional shows at Ngununggula, Ipswich Art Gallery, Lismore Regional Gallery, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Ian Potter Museum of Art.
Amber is represented by Jan Murphy Gallery Brisbane Australia.
