Prudence Flint

Prudence Flint was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1962 where she still resides. She paints around ten oil-on-linen canvases a year that depict an internalised, novelistic world. Ostensibly populated by women, largely indoors, seated, lying down, in stylised pared-down rooms, or occasionally, in simplified outdoor settings, formal gardens, parks, forests, mostly alone, sometimes in small groups, Flint’s women are captured washing, or in mid-ablute, showering, inserting contact lenses, brushing hair, or just sitting and staring ahead. The figures are distorted, following a logic more akin to early or pre-renaissance compositions. They still somehow allude to ‘real’ bodies, rather than mediated, re-touched images of women. There are numerous associations, art historical correlations, that can be drawn to Flint’s paintings, but none are either quite or entirely right.

Prudence Flint has worked within the Australian art world for three decades, steadily arriving at significant national attention, winning numerous prizes and awards. She joined Mother’s Tankstation in 2019 and has only recently begun the journey to the internationalisation of her career. She is accordingly experiencing a critical acclaim due to an elegance of execution and originality of subject matter. Recent solo exhibitions include The Wish, Fine Arts, Sydney (2020); The Visit, Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin (2019), The Call, London (2020) with notable group exhibitions including ME: An exhibition of Contemporary Self-Portraiture, High Line Nine, New York (2020), Archibald Prize, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2019 and 2018) and MoMu Museum, Antwerp (2022).