Candyss Crosby, Contemporary Australian Artist

Candyss Crosby is an artist with deep affinity and respect for the landscape and our environment. This passion lends both intensity and emotion to her work which goes far beyond simple representation. Her connection with the land becomes an inward journey, where memory and creative process reshapes the external experience, allowing the paint, memory and inner sight to spontaneously create new colours, textures and lines in the "inner landscape" that then evolves.

These canvasses rarely represent specific locations, but rather convey the mood and spirit of places and seek to evoke emotion and contemplation. This is achieved by the use of more intensified colour or texture than occurs in reality, or through the employ of certain markings, patterns and shapes, a recurring theme in her work. 

Candyss has exhibited in many galleries and events, both nationally and internationally and her contemporary art can be found in both corporate and private collections and she is currently immersed in creating a new series that will excite and challenge. "Between Heaven and Earth" is her most recent compilation following the acclaimed Dirt Lines, Lost Horizons and Kick the Dirt series. Candyss's work can be viewed at her private gallery in Curl Curl, Sydney by appointment.

I want to re-create the feeling of openness and expansiveness that I experience when I'm out in the middle of nowhere - just the sky, the earth under my feet and me," she says. "I seem so small and yet so at one with it all. I want people who see my work to be lifted into the space, to share something of that feeling."…Welcome to my website! 

Who am I?  

I migrated to Sydney from California at the age of 7, completed graphic design studies at the School of Visual Arts, Sydney, worked as a professional jazz singer and musician for six years, while living in Melbourne and completing music studies at Box Hill College. I have been a full-time painter for 12 years and am also a mother, wife, meditation student and teacher, traveller, singer and songwriter.

Why am I an artist?

Because its my calling and craft.  To share a vision.  To surrender to the joy (and sorrow) of the creative process.  To pay homage to the intrinsic relationship between the Earth and the Human Soul.

What do I want to say?

"The only constant in our world is that of flux and change and the only certainty is death.  Without death and destruction we have no new beginnings, renewal or change.  In my work I explore these aspects of the human psyche and how they closely relate to the nature of the land and environment.  The more we destroy ourselves the more we destroy the land. The landscape is a metaphor for life and death, for birth and rebirth, for creation and destruction.  I have a deep respect for our environment. I believe we can give back to our beautiful planet Earth when we have found how to truly love ourselves and those around us. We have a great responsibility and must listen to our consciousness to give back what we have taken and then to nurture.  We must listen to our higher, knowing Self, and the Land, and ultimately heal the Earth and therefore ourselves and our future… Listen to John Butler: He sings about the fragility of the environment – meaningful songs play in the background while I paint – songs about the earth Mother, songs about the greed that is dominating and exploiting the Earth, raping the Landscape’.

Visit my Sydney Gallery

You are most welcome to visit my working studio and gallery in Curl Curl on Sydney's North Shore. Please call to arrange a time on 9939 3900 or 0419 213 321.