My Painting ‘A Rose Connection’ has been selected as a finalist in the Calleen Art Award at Cowra Regional Gallery, NSW. The annual Calleen Art Award was established in 1977 as an acquisitive art prize by Mrs. Patricia Fagan OAM to encourage originality, creativity and excellence in the visual arts, and is made possible by the generous support of the Calleen Trust.
‘ A Rose Connection’, oil on linen , 112cm x 112cm, 2024.
6th September - 3rd October 2023
In The Duality of Reality, Peta Minnici presents a series of still life and interior paintings that examine how light, shadow, and reflection shape our perception of space and materiality. Translucent and opaque objects act as conduits for light, creating complex patterns of shadows and highlights that play a central role in each composition. These optical phenomena not only define form but also evoke the intangible — offering a visual metaphor for the threshold between the physical and the spiritual.
Reflections and shadows become motifs of duality — echoing the idea that what we perceive is not always aligned with what truly exists. In this way, the works suggest a layered reality, where presence and absence, material and immaterial, coalesce.
This exploration deepens in Minnici’s interior scenes, where windows and doorways function as portals between worlds. Referencing the home of the late Australian artist Arthur Boyd, these works merge memory, imagination, and lived experience into dreamlike spaces that are both intimate and expansive. Through this interplay of architectural elements and shifting landscapes, Minnici offers a quiet meditation on perception, loss, and the unseen forces that shape our lived environments.
Peta Minnici 2023
Install Images by Louis Lim
The Kedumba Drawing Collection was started in 1990 and embodies and reflects all the elements of outstanding drawing created in Australia over more than 50 years and has acquired almost two hundred drawings.
I was fortunate enough to have my work “ Looking In, Seeing Out - Bundanon” acquired for this collection
The subject of my work depicts
myself almost as a voyeur peering from the outside through the glass windows of the The Bundanon Homestead during my recent residency. Capturing both inside and the surrounding landscape in the one frame, as a play on reflections, allows the internal foyer and staircase to fuse seamlessly with the mountains and trees. My technique of mark making, formed intuitively over time, evokes the fragility of remembering by creating a blurring of focus and the slowing of viewing time. The drawn line also relates to the concept of memory consisting of a mass of marks designated into what we have seen, heard and felt.
Debutants : Peta Minnici Written by Victoria Hynes
15th January 2019 Issue 87
Peta Minnici has been a stand out student whilst completing her Master of Fine Arts at the National Art School over the past several years. In 2015, she won The John Olsen Award for Figure Drawing, as well as the Parkers Fine Art Award for Painting, both held at NAS. In 2017 she was also a finalist for the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship and has participated in group shows with Sydney’s Dominik Mersch Gallery, Manly Art Gallery and GAFFA Gallery. With a forthcoming solo exhibition at Sydney’s May Space in 2019, her subtle yet emotive artworks are sure to garner even more attention. Minnici’s tonal still life and figurative compositions evoke a pensive nostalgia akin to a faded photo album . Embracing the traditional medium of drawing, she employs the painstaking method of hatching to build up evocative images that shift between abstraction and realism. In a parallel series of watercolour and oil paintings, she slowly builds up her images with layers of translucent paint. Often drawn from private photographs, her works become a subjective recording of personal memories and past events. Describing her current practice, the artist remarks: “ I aim to undo the photographic representation of each subject into small brush strokes of tone and colour, imbuing each image with a sensation associated with memory. It’s also symbolic in that each mark creates a recording of what I have seen, heard and felt. I like to think that my paintings capture nostalgia with wistful affection and sometimes cynical humor - without being too melancholy.” - written by Victoria Hynes
