I noticed these chairs stacked against the back of a country town’s community theatre, plastic fading in the summer sun. They seemed like disbarred relics, their lives as vessels for audiences over, yet rough and ready, patiently waiting for their time to be called on again. Trapped in a kind of purgatory between their last life and the next. A gentle reminder of the cycles of life, and the still, quiet moments of the in-between.
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.
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 Packers Prize. She has been a finalist in the 2022 Newcastle Club Art Prize, 2022 Lake Art Prize, 2021 National Emerging Art Prize, 2021 Gosford Art Prize, and the 2020 Blake Prize.
