Michelle Teear was born in Sydney in 1984. She was awarded a Bachelor Fine Arts from the University of New South Wales in 2005. She is represented by Straitjacket, with her fourth solo show in May 2024.  

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Michelle is a contemporary Australian painter working in egg tempera using classical paint making techniques. Her paintings present visions of worlds that embrace her inner emotional landscapes. There is a calmness in calligraphic transparent brushstrokes that lead a slow journey through the landscape. Michelle's art is an act of personal transformation. She travels to remote regions to work from a neutral space free from restrictive ideologies. Painting becomes a process for self-awareness and freedom seeking. Reoccurring themes such as water holes and starry night skies feature as deep expanses to draw us towards looking within to witness the stories we hold inside.

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She sources and grinds pigment from the earth. This act of connection is a literal way of grounding her practice in a material timelessness. She combines earth pigments with egg, an emulsion of life (embryo) and the foundations of the earth (mineral).

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Her work has been a finalist in numerous prizes including the Evelyn Chapman award, Mosman, Paddington, Gosford and the Newcastle Club Foundation Prize. She has completed numerous residencies including Mornington and Bundanon. She is an art educator and has provided workshops for UNSW and MAC Yapang. She is a peer for Creative Australia and Museums & Galleries NSW, and previously Bundanon. Working from her lived experience she is a disability advocate and educator for the arts.

 

Michelle lives and works on Awabakal country, Newcastle, Australia.