Kathryn Ryan Australia

Kathryn Ryan is a Victorian-based artist whose practice spans both painting and drawing, delving into the elusive states of transition and ambiguity. Her work is captivated by the ‘in-between’; the liminal spaces where opposites coexist. Presence and absence, clarity and obscurity, strength and fragility. Rather than rendering the tangible, Ryan gravitates toward the intangible—silhouettes, husks, and shadows that hint at entities without fully revealing them. In this way, her drawings become an allegory of drawing itself: acts of suggestion rather than declaration.

After several years living in the United Arab Emirates, Ryan returned to the South-West Victorian landscapes of her youth, reconnecting with the deep-rooted sense of place that continues to shape her work. This intimacy infuses her practice with a quiet tension; her compositions invite viewers into realms that feel both deeply personal and strangely universal, spaces that are calm yet restless in their stillness.

Through her nuanced treatment of light and shadow, Ryan creates atmospheric works that oscillate between the familiar and the strange. Her surfaces evoke human emotion through abstraction, balancing bold precision with quiet ambiguity. In doing so, she invites viewers not just to see, but to sense—to engage with the landscape, nature and its essence on an intuitive level.