Biography
Robyn Sweaney was born in Melbourne and currently lives in Mullumbimby on the north coast of NSW. Sweaney excavates the complexities of place by responding to the suburban mundane of Australian environments. Tightly refined homes and streetscapes function as repositories of identity – aesthetic incarnations of the belief structures influencing human behaviours on emotional, intellectual and spiritual levels.
Sweaney has been the finalist of major awards including in the Wynne Prize, Sulman Prize, Portia Geach Memorial Award, Moran Portrait Prize, Salon Des Refusés, Fleurieu Art Prize, Mosman Art Prize, Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, Tattersalls Art Prize, Paddington Art Prize and the Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Prize (JADA). In 2016 her paintings were exhibited in the Popular Pet Show exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. Her work is held in public and private collections throughout Australia, such as The State Library of NSW, Artbank, The Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Tweed Regional Gallery,Stanthorpe, Grafton and Lismore Regional Galleries.
To download Robyn's latest cv click here
Image: Mark Mohell, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
Artist Statement
The subject matter for Sweaney’s artwork is generally sourced from her immediate environment, the home, garden and the suburban landscape. Her work explores notions of Australian identity and place.
The homes and streetscapes that Sweaney portrays in her artwork divulge more than just an external view. Homes and buildings can represent belief structures that influence human behaviours and aesthetics on many emotional, intellectual and spiritual levels. Lately her work has incorporated rural landscape to express notions of travel, distance and how we view familiar and unfamiliar places.