“An epiphany,”, 2024

In this work I wanted to use the physical landscape as a visual metaphor of moving through internal emotional terrain. This was a scene I encountered on the Grand Canyon track in the Blue Mountains when I was hiking there in 2021. I had not previously approached the photo to utilise the image in my paintings and rediscovered it earlier this year whilst deep in some extended time away from my practice.

Melbourne based Australian artist; Katie Daniels is a landscape painter with a distinctive colour palette who aims to capture the essence of the landscape. In her paintings Katie is concerned with expressing joy and appreciation for nature and the environment via bold colour and her gestural treatment of the subject matter. Katie interprets her paintings as methods of record keeping, not only of her own personal experience of transformative feelings, but of the environment depicted. It is not lost on her that landscape painting is a way of safeguarding for the collective memory, or keeping a visual history of nature, and preserving the environment she witnesses and experiences for the future. Ultimately Katie’s hope is that her paintings resonate with the beauty that she witnessed in the presence of their subject, and that they speak of her appreciation for nature and the unique landscapes she visits and inhabits.

Katie is originally from the Illawarra region of New South Wales. She holds a BCA with First Class Honours from the University of Wollongong, and a Masters in Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne. She has previously been a finalist in several National prizes, such as the Wynne Prize in 2018, the National Emerging Artist Prize in 2021 and the Calleen Art Award in 2021 and 2022. In 2021, her entry for the Calleen Art Award was acquired by the Cowra Regional Gallery for their permanent collection.

Katie currently lives and works in Melbourne.