Artist Profile — Liss Finney
Liss Finney (b. 1992, Lutruwita / Tasmania) is a multidisciplinary Australian artist living on Awabakal Country in Mulubinba / Newcastle, NSW. Her art practice is dynamic and varied, but she finds comfort and solace in the act of painting. Her process is one of observation, introspection and investigation, revealing intimate moments and shared human experiences through objects, interactions with spaces, and the suggestion of presence through absence.
‘From the Sidelines’ is a series of still lifes which recall the nostalgia of an Australian summer and reflect the artist’s current state of being. Capturing the rigid pastel chairs that fuse to skin on hot days, positioned between the bold, hard lines of tennis courts, the works suggest an absence of the physical body, and of action, yet a presence of spectatorship; the reassuring yet sometimes uncomfortable feeling of watching events unfold from the sidelines.
Liss has a background in Scientific Illustration, holding a Bachelor Degree with Distinction in Natural History Illustration from the University of Newcastle, and is currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the National Art School, majoring in painting. Finney has exhibited across NSW. Most recently, her work ‘Self Portrait as a Wetsuit’ won the 2021 Hawkesbury Art Prize Packers Prize. She has been a finalist in the 2021 National Emerging Art Prize, 2021 Gosford Art Prize, 2021 Little Things Art Prize and the 2020 Blake Prize.
