Cosima Scales
TWO FINE PAINTERS
Cosima Scales is a painter based in Meanjin (Brisbane) who makes paintings of intimate scenes and spaces that reflect on personal experience, working both from life and from snapshot references. Since completing a Master of Visual Art by research at the Queensland College of Art in 2018, she has held group and solo exhibitions across Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Inverell. In 2020, she was a finalist in the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship.
Home is a house on a hill, where windows look onto neighbouring rooftops and a passionfruit vine hurries along the fence. Inside, funny details lead me to think it was built by an enthusiastic amateur—a leaning hallway, mismatched shelves, and a tiny sunroom behind an unruly hibiscus. The paintings in this series are observations of the space that contains me, my possessions, my routines and ordinary worries. I lifted my eye from the tabletop view that has
held my attention for the past few years, during which I primarily painted still lifes. I looked up and into rooms. I noticed colours, patterns and grids repeating across spaces, and I was surprised by moments of beauty, like the modulations of white and grey in the corners of rooms
and a blue twilight through my windows.
Education
2018 Master of Visual Art by research, (postgraduate research scholarship), QCA
2015 Bachelor of Fine Art with Honours (First Class), QCA
2012 Bachelor of Fine Art, National Art School
Solo exhibitions
2021 Mushroom Skin, Allison Kate Bellinger Gallery, Inverell, NSW
2020 Sunroom Paintings, Allison Kate Bellinger Gallery, Inverell, NSW
2019 Bench Space, Wreckers Artspace, Brisbane
Indoors, C3 Artspace, Melbourne
2018 Portals, Project Gallery, QCA Galleries, Brisbane
Selected group exhibitions
2022 Summer Salon, Michael Reid Northern Beaches, Newport, NSW
2021 Still Life, Brickworks Gallery, Castlemaine, Victoria
2020 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship 2020, finalists exhibition, Brett Whiteley Studio,
Sydney
2020 Form and Function, STABLE, Brisbane
2020 Small Acts, Innerspace Contemporary Art, Brisbane
2019 The Utopian Object, C3 Artspace, Melbourne
2017 Pieces, curated by Cut Thumb Laundry, Metro Arts, Brisbane
2017 Empathy Toward Plants, Project Gallery, QCA, Brisbane
2016 Interrupted Horizons, Rubicon ARI, Melbourne
2016 We are not Ourselves, Byron School of Art Project Space, Mullumbimby
2015 What’s Out There, The Laundry Artspace, Brisbane
Awards
2020 Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, finalist
2015 The St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital Art Prize, winner
Residencies
2018 Outer Space ARI, Brisbane
2016 BigCi, Bilpin, NSW
2014 Listhús Artspace, Olafsfjordur, Iceland