About the Artist

Stella Clarke is a landscape artist whose work explores the emotional and ecological character of place. Her paintings and works on paper balance material abstraction with clear, grounded references to the natural world, inviting viewers into a direct, intuitive connection without the need for heavy mediation.

Stella's practice is shaped by close observation of environments across Victoria, from coastal edges to central highlands, where she is now based. Some artworks tend toward the elegiac or imaginative, unanchored to specific geography; others interpret recognizable sites with attentive clarity.

Her interest in the layered histories of place has deepened since moving from bush acreage to Ballarat's historic centre. The city's gold-rush past, industrial traces, and surrounding bushland now draw her interest at the interface between landscape, past and present.

Living in a rural area at the time of the Black Summer fires marked a turning point in Stella's practice. She began to work with a heightened environmental awareness, developing sustainable studio methods, and experimenting with charcoal and earth pigments, working on paper. This evolution culminated in a major research project and exhibition with Federation University, Landscape to Earthscape: Practice and Aesthetics in a Time of Environmental Crisis, which situates her work within the environmental humanities and contemporary nature-based art. This project has been a foundation for current artistic explorations.

Visual Arts Education:

2024 Master of Visual Arts by Research, Federation University
2022 Research Integrity Training Course
2021 National Art School (Drawing Methodologies, The Process of Painting)

Selected Solo Exhibitions:

2024 'Landscape to Earthscape', Post Office Gallery, Ballarat.
2019 'On Bass Strait', Metropolis Gallery, Geelong.
2018 'New Coastal Works', Metropolis Gallery, Geelong
2016 'Ocean Story, Qdos Gallery, Lorne.

Recent Group Exhibitions:

2025 The Flanagan Art Prize
2024 Lethbridge Art Prize, Salon des Refuses
2022 John Villiers Outback Art Prize
2021 'Nature Works', Art Gallery of Ballarat, Backspace
2021 Lethbridge 2000 Small Scale Art Award
2021 Bushfire Benefit Exhibition, Bullarto Gallery
2020 Summer Salon, Metropolis Gallery
2017 Flanagan Art Prize
2015 Flanagan Art Prize

Selected Grants and Awards:

2024 Master of Visual Arts by Research and Exhibition
2023 Special Commendation for Excellence, Visual Arts Thesis Presentation, 'Connecting Minds and Communities', Graduate Research Conference, Federation University
2022 Commonwealth and Australian Government Research Training Programme, Post Graduate Research Scholarship
2020 Arts Council of Australia Resilience Grant

Art Media:

Winter Solstice, Ekphrastic Exhibition Catalogue SHAC 2026
LANDSCAPE TO EARTHSCAPE - Federation University Australia
'Nature Works, A Meeting of Minds', Times News Group
'The Art Gallery of Ballarat Opens New Exhibition, Nature Works', The Courier
'Looking to the Natural Landscape for Inspiration', Times News Group
'Hidden Gems Shine in Beaufort', Times News Group
Interview, 'Mornings with Gavin McGrath', ABC Radio
'Stella Clarke at Qdos', Surf Coast Times
'Waves of Creativity', The Geelong Advertiser
'Postcards', Channel 9
'Art Nation', ABC

Humanities Background:

Dr. Stella Clarke's art practice and research is inevitably informed by a broad-based arts background. Formerly an academic and then a critic writing for major Australian publications, she engaged deeply with contemporary literature and cultural history. More recently, she has focused upon environmentalist thought and nature writing. These influences continue to shape her approach to landscape painting and material experimentation.