Australian Women Artists

The Podcast

Ep 69 Heidi Yardley

Heidi Yardley is a Melbourne-born painter whose work occupies a significant space in contemporary Australian art — intimate, psychological, and immediately recognisable.

‘[Heidi] works with found images to create scenes of mysterious temporality. Often painted in faded hues, her artwork is suggestive of a period that could sit somewhere between the 1960’s and 70’s.’

She works with oil paint and charcoal and incredible collaging techniques where she creates anonymous portraits of sexualised and domesticated femininity.

Over three decades she has drawn on vintage imagery, cinema, music, and the female experience as inspiration.

Heidi has been a finalist in significant prizes including The Archibald Prize, Wynne Prize, Sulman Prize and The Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, has held two artist residencies in New York, and has been listed as one of Australia’s 50 most collectable artists.

It was a great broad ranging conversation. We covered her obsession with art at high school and her struggle to get into the painting course she desperately wanted (spoiler: she persisted and got in!), her love of figurative art and having to resist pressures from outside to think and act more conceptually – and her persistence paid dividends again. I loved her description of how she felt when overseas standing in front of paintings she had only seen in books to that point. We talked about her visual language, how she finds titles for her works and ... Nick Cave. Which I’m always up for a chat about.

Mood, mystery and the unresolved image.

Head to the link in my bio to have a listen. Heidi is represented by Jan Murphy Gallery, Brisbane (@janmurphygallery) and Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne (@nicholasthompsongallery)

Images

1. HY by Lisa Barmby

2. The masked bride, 2024 oil on canvas 140 x 100

3. The black veil, 2019 charcoal on primed paper 84 x 110

4. The door, 2021 oil on canvas 144 x 116

5. Psychique 2021 oil on canvas 140 x 110