Naomi McCann is an emerging artist working in the fields of painting and drawing. She graduated in 2023 with a Bachelor of Visual Art (Hons) from the Adelaide Central School of Art and was awarded the Hill Smith Art Advisory Certificate of Commendation. She went on to finalise in the National Emerging Art Prize (Michael Reid Galleries, NSW), the Adelaide Parklands Art Prize and the Fleurieu Biennale.

Working primarily in oil on canvas, Naomi’s long engagement with drawing, abstraction and unforeseen outcomes coalesce with historical approaches to landscape painting. These works present as formally accessible but with an undercurrent of disquiet suggested by future technologies and possessive appraisals of land, sea and skies. At once epic and ethereal, the harmonious palette is at odds with unsettling themes.

Naomi’s works on paper are made using found and custom-cut stencils, ruling, embossing, cycloidal drawing and other experimental methods. As the forms build upon themselves through translucent layers of graphite, ink, pastel and paint they begin to imply a sense of human endeavour and invention, while the smaller scale and gentle hues allude to our early stage of technological evolution. Hinting at architectural motifs such as aqueducts, cities, ports, towers, bridges and rigs, the works modulate from geometric to painterly, linear to ambient, and abstract to known. The experimental approach results in discrete, evocative forms borne from a practised absence of intention, and enduring belief in process and materials.

Naomi lives and works on Kaurna land, South Australia with her family of five.