Chris Wise UK, Australia, b. 1975

Overview
View works. Chris Wise, Fields of Blue, 2024
Fields of Blue, 2024
View works

Chris Wise b.1975 - United Kingdom. Lives and works in Australia.


Chris is a Sydney-based artist whose creative journey led to a successful career in commercial design and art direction, returning to a deeply personal painting practice. Though his professional path diverged for many years, his artistic urge and foundation -a First-class BA Hons in Fine Art Painting - remained a constant pull, eventually leading him back to the freedom of expressive,
intuitive mark making. For Chris, painting is innate, an intuitive reaction to a deep and indescribable compulsion - compelling him to interpret and articulate feelings, thoughts, observations and ideas through abstract expression.

Chris's approach to painting merges spontaneous automatism with deliberate gestural abstraction. Through a balance of conscious intention and unconscious instinctiveness, he aims to build
a connection between process, materiality and surface, which is both impulsive and intuitive.
Working from his light-filled studio in Glebe, in Sydney's Inner West, Chris continues to push his practice forward.

Over the past 18 months, he has completed five self-funded residencies on Gundungurra Country in regional NSW, producing a series of large-scale plein air works titled 'The Golspie Paintings'.

These will be exhibited to a wider audience in 2025.

 

Works
Biography
View works. Chris Wise, Fields of Blue, 2024
Fields of Blue, 2024
View works

THOUGHT PROCESS

The following paragraphs are Chris' current thoughts regarding process and will inevitably evolve alongside the work.

"The paintings are built on bursts of painterly gestures often sparked by thoughts of landscapes, seascapes - remembered, seen or imagined - or a lyric heard and scratched across the surface. Although looking to avoid representational content, landscapes become an inevitable reaction but remain abstracted and seek to reach further than it's place in my memory or experience.

Each piece is a stepping stone to the next, with the experience of making dragged between works. Although I do not set out to create a given series of works, jumping between surfaces and returning to previous artworks to input new discoveries allows the paintings to have a visual conversation with each other. It's important for me not to overwhelm this process with logic and to set myself apart from the work to allow each piece to complete itself.

Returning to painting after a sizeable hiatus has been both necessary and deeply fulfilling. The time away has given the process energy, which undoubtedly comes from life experienced, urgency and the need to uncoil from life's unnecessaries. When putting aside the vector tools of a commercial creative career, I must reject hesitancy and maintain the contradiction between order and flux, direction and spontaneity, perfection and acceptance. Over time, I aim to see the fierce urgency to act replaced with an openness and freedom of energy. Years of unnecessary overconsumption of manufactured clutter must be stripped away and replenished with a deeper reality and truer manifestations.

In the same way I found myself in Australia, my painting practice is a wanderlust. The adventure this time comes from not knowing the destination, just a deep sense of direction and a certainty that there will be conflict and revelation along the way. Perhaps the only certainty is that the act of painting - my mode of transport - becomes better at navigation, handling surfaces and materials - adapting confidently to the terrain and allowing myself to grow as a painter and a human."

 

EXHIBITIONS / ART PRIZES

2025 - Passion For Painting
Digital Exhibition
Curated by Paddington Art Prize, Marlene Antico OAM

June 2025
2025 - Overflow

Group Exhibition - Nauti Studios, Sydney

April 2025
2025 - BCFA Group Exhibition
Yvonne East, Gabby Malpas, Chris Wise
Brenda Colahan Fine Art, Sydney

March 2025
2024 - Joie de Noël
An exhibition of exquisite small artworks.
Brenda Colahan Fine Art, Sydney

December 2024
Paddington Art Prize 2024

Non-Acquisitive Award Winner
Finalist Exhibition
Art Leven Gallery, Sydney Oct 2024

National Contemporary Art Prize 2024

Finalist Exhibition
Aarwun Gallery, Canberra ACT Sept 2024

Greenway Art Prize 2024

Finalist Exhibition
White Bay Power Station, Sydney September 2024

 National Emerging Art Prize (NEAP) 2023

Finalist Exhibition
Michael Reid Art Bar, Sydney Oct 2023
Riverside Centre, Brisbane Nov 2023


EDUCATION
Southampton Institute of Higher Education
1995 - 1998
BA (Hons) Fine Art - First Class Honours

 

Epping Forest College
1994 - 1995
BTEC Diploma in Foundation Studies Art and Design
Pass with distinction

 

Exhibitions