Growing up on a sheep farm in East Gippsland gave Gillian her strong connection to land and nature, and she continues to be inspired by her environment, now working and residing on the Mornington Peninsula.
Studying painting at RMIT from1976 to 1980 brought her attention to an urban artistic haven, where she was inspired by Australian and American abstract expressionism.
She began to look at ways to layer paint and colours, and develop a language of symbols of a gestural nature that gave her work energy ,form and strength.
After completing her post graduate studies in painting she was awarded the RMIT Travelling Scholarship, where she was able to tour major European galleries and see paintings she had only ever seen in art books. Artists such as Matisse, Van Gogh and Picasso came to her attention.
On her return, she moved from inner city Melbourne to suburban Ivanhoe continuing to exhibit in many group shows, producing semi-abstract expressionist subjects in landscapes, colourful and rambling flower paintings and striking stilllife paintings, loving a new found domestic enviroment .
In 1990 Gillian and family moved to Red Hill,where she began painting the beautiful vistas of the Mornington Peninsula. She was soon also inspired by the abundance of produce grown in the area, and for a period concentrated on still life subjects using watercolours ,oils and acrylics. Over time she established herself as a respected community artist, exhibiting her work widely, running a local gallery and shop and completing numerous commissions- private pieces, stationary, signage, prints and portraits. She won many local awards during this time.
Gillian continues to experiment with new concepts, forms and materials. She paints with an intuitive response on paper and canvas allowing new images to arise usually through series of lines and layers. " It is always an exploratory process". She loves diversity and explores many mediums and subjects.
Her work is collected both locally and internationally. She enjoys the challenge of expressing the inner through the outer, and hopefully discovering beauty in the process.
Recent Exhibitions
2025 Summer Soiree Group Show, Manyung Gallery Sorrento
2024 Peninsula Panoramas, Manyung Gallery Flinders
2024 Spring Fever, Manyung Gallery Art & Design
2024 Walking Through Frankston Group Printmaking Show, FAC
2024 Summer Soiree Group Show, Manyung Gallery Sorrento
2023 Nature, Group Show, Manyung Gallery Sorrento
2022 Going Fishing, Group Show, Manyung Gallery Sorrento
2022 Summer Soiree Group Show, Manyung Gallery Sorrento
2021 Summer Soiree Group Show, Manyung Gallery Sorrento
2020 Shortlisted, SBS Landscape Prize
2017 Whistlewood, Shoreham, 'Sense Of Place' group Summer Show
2017 Manyung Gallery, 'Backyard and Veggie Patches', joint exhibition
2015 Red Artists Gallery, group show
2015 Merricks House Gallery, joint exhibition
2011 Manyung Gallery, group show
2011 Art Melbourne, exhibitor
1999–2014 Red Hill Cool Stores Gallery, represented
1997 The Art Shed, Red Hill, ‘Fantasea’
1996 Café La Strada, High St Armadale, 'Celebrating Life'
1996 The Art Shed, 'The Garden Party’
1996 Noels Gallery, 'Spring On the Peninsula'
1995 A.R.T. Gallery, Collins St, Melbourne, 'Harvest Exhibition', 'Spring Exhibition', and 'Cornucopia'
1995 Papillion Jewellers and Gallery, Malvern
1995 Fitzroy Gallery, group show
Education
1976-1978 – Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) RMIT
1979 – Post-Graduate Diploma Fine Art (Painting) RMIT
1983 – Diploma Education, Melbourne State College
Commendations & Projects:
2020 Shortlisted SBS Landscape Prize
1998 Best Flower Painting, Flinders Art Show
1996 Best Drawing, Hastings Marina Art Show
1995 Best Painting, Flinders, Art Show
1994 Best Flower Painting, Flinders Art Show
1992 Best Watercolour, Hastings Marina Art Show
"I work with a multitude of mediums to express my artistic ideas- they flow between still life pieces, realised with almost botanical accuracy, to abstract, painterly and layered expressions. My imagination is given scope and room to roam by moving between detailed work and loose naiveity, and further, through the diversity of artist tools and the materials I use- oil, acrylic, ink, water color, Japanese sumi brushes, hand made paper, charcoal and more. Whether it be a kind of contemporary realism or abstract scenes I see my work as visual landscapes, playful, vivid and alive".
Gillian Haig