Installation image, Microcosmographia, Fortyfive Downstairs Melbourne

Double-Edged Wand, pencil, watercolour and gouache on paper

Spirit Door

Refuge Tonneau

Sanctuary

The Search For Lost Time

Artist statement

'Naomi Bishop understands that the eye is always looking for a place to rest but that the spirit is restless. In her paintings timescales layer, matter and light splitting her objects – ritual, magical – into dimensions beginning here but arriving someplace just beyond us. These paintings have been shaped by her travels across three continents. They bring together the sheer crystalline force of Finland’s winter daylight, the damp edges of Taipei’s forests, the drama of our own dry scrub’s sandpaper heat. The paintings come alive in this way; a portal opens up between them and us. For Naomi perhaps they exist as a kind of map. For us they are a trail'  Emily Stewart

The Unexplained and Unexplored are recurring themes in my work. I am interested in exploring darkness, silence, mysterious events and peripheral landscapes, other worldly places and objects.

I am interested the ways in which we are shaped by the natural environment, and the ways in which natural and celestial phenomena are interpreted and developed into belief systems.

Over the past few years I have continued working with mysterious landscapes, symbols, and ritual objects, making images of memorial stones, forest burial grounds and illusory thresholds, and objects and places might be used for conjuring supernatural forces.

I am open to invitations to exhibit, both in Australia and abroad either in curated group or solo shows and collaborative projects. I am an experienced and professional artist having presented many exhibitions internationally.

I am currently working towards a solo exhibition to be presented in Melbourne, Australia in late 2021.