CV
Brittany Ferns
Painting & Mixed Media.
b. Sydney Australia. 1988.
Lives and works in Newcastle
NSW, Australia
@brittany.ferns
brittanyfernsart@gmail.com
Artist Bio
Brittany Ferns is an Australian artist based in Newcastle, NSW, whose work explores simple symbols, recurring motifs, and the quiet poetry of everyday life. Born to a Uruguayan mother and an Australian father, her art reflects a deep curiosity about culture and a fascination with symbols that cross time and place, forming a visual language that resonates across past and present.
A pivotal chapter in Brittany’s practice unfolded during a transformative year-long journey through Mexico and Guatemala with her husband and two children, Zali and Edie. Immersed in the vibrancy of local traditions, she collaborated with artisans, studied traditional crafts, and deepened her understanding of textures, materials, and hand-making techniques—all of which continue to inform her work today.
Originally trained as a textile designer in Los Angeles, Brittany brings a meticulous attention to materials to her painting practice. She works with thick textured linens, handmade boards, oil paint, wax, plasters, and rice papers, layering surfaces to create tactile, earthy compositions. Her muted, natural palette and softly layered marks evoke subtle narratives, gentle wonder, and worlds just slightly out of reach.
Through her practice, Brittany Ferns invites viewers into small, whimsical worlds built from symbols, textures, and stories.
Artist statement
Hailing from the Newcastle region of NSW, Brittany Ferns’ work celebrates quiet stories and everyday moments reimagined through a soft, folkloric lens. Her practice has evolved from capturing fleeting gestures in the streets to exploring simple symbols and motifs drawn from the immediate world, such as suns, flowers, shells, and forms that quietly linger in memory. She is particularly interested in symbols that cross time and culture, forming a visual language that resonates across past and present.
Ferns’ imagery is guided by a delicate interplay of texture, shape, and material. She works with thick textured linens, handmade boards, oil paint, and wax, layering pigments to create tactile, earthy surfaces. Figures and symbols float in subtly layered compositions, forming worlds just slightly out of reach. Recurrent motifs emerge across her work, forming connections between memory, imagination, and collective stories.
Through these simple, recurring symbols, Ferns creates small, whimsical worlds layered with meaning, inviting viewers to linger, imagine, and discover.
The artist, Brittany Ferns
Hailing from the Newcastle Region of NSW, Brittany Ferns has long gravitated towards the landscapes of her surroundings. She has an affliction for the humble, every day moments captured from day to day life. This imbued realism is evident in her work. A street vendor selling fruit, a man holding flowers.
The faces of those who pass her in the street serve as her subject, but also inform her practice. More recently the nature of her immediate environment, the backyard and the simple beauty of the flowers within it. Once the subject is decided the delicate dance of texture, shape and material is found. Flat planed cubist subjects stare from her canvases, as if plastered to a street wall or shopfront.
Recurring motifs remain, while still life’s explore a connection to place.
Her philosophy embodies themes of ephemerality and time, she encapsulates the idea of the past informing the future. Her figures echo the frescoes of ancient civilizations and this idea extends to her use of materials. It’s these materials that give her work its layered significance; raw pigments are mixed with plasters, waxes and mineral dusts to impose narratives of history and time.
To Ferns, the idea of the Japanese Wabi-Sabi philosophy is paramount – that there is beauty in imperfection; nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect.