Loralee Jade
When painting I lose track of time. I’m aware that something is happening but I don’t know what it is. It’s much like the wordless thoughts conjured by looking into a fire or the tender recollection of a dream upon waking. It’s more about the feeling than the seeing. Perhaps it’s all just a forlorn attempt to give shape to feelings of compassion, grief and horror.
I live and work on the North-West Coast of Tasmania, where I’ve transformed my childhood home into the studio where I now paint. Returning to this space—steeped in memory, loss, and love—has shaped the way I create and the emotions I seek to explore.
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When I paint, I lose track of time. Something is happening, but I don’t always know what it is. It feels much like staring into a fire or holding onto the fragile recollection of a dream—fleeting, wordless, and deeply felt. For me, painting is less about what we see and more about what we feel.
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My practice draws on memory and personal experience, and I often work across silk, linen, and canvas. The works hover between figuration
and abstraction, dissolving into layers that attempt to give shape to compassion, grief, and tenderness.
Painting began as a way for me to navigate grief after losing my father, and it has remained a deeply therapeutic process ever since—a way to process, heal, and connect.
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I aspire to create works that are sensuous, bodily, and emotional; spaces that invite you into the same wonder and vulnerability that guide me in the studio. Whether through large-scale works like Surrender and Catch or more intimate explorations of memory, I see painting as a way to move beyond language into something more universal—something that touches the core of being human.
Somewhere between my two roles, mother and painter, there is me, a woman. Not an in-between, but a third presence entirely. In the imagined Venn diagram of my life, the centre circle is supposed to hold the “I.” But what I find there now is less a fixed self and more a shifting, breathing form, marked and tendered by all I hold and all that holds me.
I am found here, a little more crinkled than before, edges softened and worn in from use. The pigment of me has rearranged, some hues faded from overexposure, others deepened in secret places. There are patches I don’t recognize anymore, and others that feel freshly born. My saturation has changed.