James Drinkwater

We’re thrilled to announce James Drinkwater is a finalist in the Sulman Prize 2026 at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

‘For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams’ 2026
oil, enamel and charcoal on linen
210 x 260 cm

Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes 2026
9 May – 16 August 2026
Art Gallery of New South Wales

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In 2025, James Drinkwater's work Sunday in Albi has been acquired by the Blanca and Borja Thyssen-Bornemisza collection for the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid.

We are delighted to share that James Drinkwater is featured in the newly published Artists by Artists (Thames & Hudson), an ambitious project by Michelle Grey and Susan Armstrong. The book brings together fifty of Australia’s leading artists, thoughtfully paired to create portraits of one another.

Drinkwater was partnered with celebrated artist Ken Done, offering a unique exchange of perspectives and practices. The publication provides a rare insight into the creative processes, inspirations, and personal reflections that shape each artist’s work, while also highlighting the connections that emerge when artists turn their gaze towards each other.

Through striking imagery and candid storytelling, Artists by Artists presents an intimate and dynamic portrait of Australia’s contemporary art community, with Drinkwater’s contribution a highlight of this landmark project.

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IMAGE:
James Drinkwater and Ken Done, courtesy Thames and Hudson

James Drinkwater stands out as a promising talent within the Australian art scene. Known for his dynamic paintings, Drinkwater brings an energetic approach to contemporary art that is both refreshing and impactful. His works are recognised for their vibrant colours and distinctive textures, adding layers of emotional depth and inviting viewers to explore their own responses to each piece. As a significant figure among emerging Australian artists, Drinkwater's art evokes curiosity and conversation.

In presenting his unique style, Drinkwater combines a rich palette with expressive brushwork. This combination results in paintings that feel alive with emotion, capturing stories and experiences through abstraction. His art reflects an innovative vision, turning everyday moments into powerful visual narratives. What makes his paintings especially accessible is how deeply personal yet relatable they are. He doesn’t complicate his art with technical distance. Instead, each piece draws people in, inviting interpretation and emotional response.

The Role of Colour in James Drinkwater's Work

Colour plays a central role in James Drinkwater’s artistic language. He uses it not just to fill space but to stir emotion, set the tone and ask questions. Rather than relying on defined forms, Drinkwater lets colour drive the response. His palette often feels spontaneous but is deeply considered. The placement and intensity of each hue are deliberate, sometimes loud and other times subtle, depending on the emotional pull of the piece.

Two of his paintings that showcase this are:

- A Burst of Joy: Bursting with oranges and yellows set against dusky blues, this painting conveys both high energy and quiet reflection. It feels like capturing a memory that’s bright but tinged with nostalgia.

- Melancholic Reflections: Muted greys and pale greens dominate here, creating a mood that’s softer and more introspective. It doesn’t try to explain itself but feels open to personal interpretation.

Through these works and others, Drinkwater demonstrates a strong belief in colour as emotion. He has a way of using hue and saturation to shape the mood without ever needing to define a subject clearly. That opens the door for the viewer to connect more freely. How they see the painting may depend on how they’re feeling in the moment, which is part of what gives his art depth and staying power.

Exploring Texture in Drinkwater's Paintings

James Drinkwater is known for the physicality in his work, and nothing captures that better than the textures he creates on canvas. Texture isn’t just a feature — it’s part of the emotion. His approach is tactile and highly instinctive, where movement in the application becomes part of the story. There’s no effort to hide brushstrokes, tool marks or layering. Instead, they’re central to the overall effect.

Drinkwater works quickly and with purpose, using a variety of tools like palette knives, brushes, rags and sometimes even his hands. He scrapes, builds, removes and re-applies. Paint goes on thick in one place, thin in another. And he often leaves parts of previous gestures visible under the new ones, like memories pushing up through the surface.

Here are five common ways texture shows up in his work:

1. Heavy build-ups of paint that rise off the canvas

2. Bold brushstrokes that carry the rhythm of his movement

3. Scraped-back sections that reveal earlier versions underneath

4. Contrasting materials such as charcoal or pencil for added grit

5. Abrupt changes in surface treatment to create tension

These textures do more than add visual interest. They give each work a kind of weight and presence that’s hard to ignore. It feels like you’re seeing the process as much as the result. That sense of honesty cuts through and helps viewers feel connected to the painting in a physical, hands-on way.

Influences and Inspirations

Behind Drinkwater’s creative style is a mix of personal history, Australian heritage and influences from other artists. He has spoken openly about the impact that growing up near the coast has had on his work. There’s an organic, weathered quality to many of his paintings that hints at salt air, open space and the passing of time. These aren’t literal landscapes, but the energy of place is there in the layered, shifting colours and rough surfaces.

He’s also been shaped by conversations with Australian modernists such as Albert Tucker or Sidney Nolan, whose work broke away from detailed representation to embrace mood, suggestion and national identity. Drinkwater builds on these ideas in his own way, adding intensity and immediacy through texture and scale.

Music and family life also play a role. Many of his works are inspired by moments of personal meaning — a memory, an emotion, or a fleeting idea. One painting combines aggressive reds and muted blacks to reflect what he once described as a “moment of deep personal conflict.” The raw arrangement of colours and textures creates a clash that’s hard to turn away from. You might not know exactly what it’s about, but you can feel the tension.

This blending of outside influence and internal experience makes his work feel grounded, but always driven by emotion. It reflects an artist who is willing to absorb and respond to the world around him without mimicking it.

The Impact of James Drinkwater on Contemporary Australian Art

James Drinkwater is a vital voice in contemporary Australian art. He's part of a growing group of artists who are rejecting polished realism in favour of expression, gesture and process. Rather than telling viewers what to see, he encourages them to explore what they feel.

His ability to fuse bold emotion with the memory of place gives his work an edge — something uniquely Australian, yet open to global conversations. Drinkwater’s paintings have featured alongside works by respected peers such as Sally Anderson, Vipoo Srivilasa, Miranda Skoczek, Jake Walker, Joanna Logue and Ross Laurie. Together, they represent a rich thread in modern Australian painting that values experimentation and emotional honesty.

Beyond his art, Drinkwater’s influence is felt in how he talks about making art. He’s open about the mess, the doubt, the breakthroughs — and that’s inspiring to emerging artists who might feel pressure to always be polished or conceptual. His approach suggests that real meaning can come from process, from risk, from pushing material around until it says something back to you.

In interviews and exhibitions alike, it becomes clear that he's not trying to build an image — he's trying to build a connection. That’s helped reshape how contemporary painting is seen in Australia today.

Experience James Drinkwater at Edwina Corlette Gallery

If you really want to understand James Drinkwater's work, it’s worth seeing it in person. Photos don’t do justice to the layers, the texture and the energy that comes through when you're standing in front of one of his paintings. The surfaces tell as much of a story as the image itself.

At Edwina Corlette Gallery in Brisbane, visitors have the chance to engage with Drinkwater’s art up close. Regular exhibitions feature his latest pieces either solo or alongside other contemporary Australian artists. These shows create a curated conversation between artists, allowing differences and similarities to play off each other and giving audiences a richer understanding of the broader art scene.

Whether an exhibition is focused solely on his work or thematic across multiple artists, Drinkwater’s paintings tend to stand out. Not because they’re louder, but because they feel true. They invite a longer look, or maybe even a second visit.

His paintings don’t just hang on the wall. They hold attention. They ask to be considered, not explained. And they offer something different each time you return to them. That’s part of what makes the experience so engaging for visitors and collectors alike. James Drinkwater’s work doesn’t fade into the background — it stays with you.

To explore more work that captures raw emotion through movement, colour and layered form, take a closer look at how James Drinkwater brings his creative process to life at Edwina Corlette.

We are delighted to share that James Drinkwater has been named a finalist in the 2025 Mosman Art Prize with his work Piano Nobile (reprise 1).

Now in its 78th year, the Mossman Art Prize is Australia’s longest running and most prestigious municipal painting award, providing a defining platform for contemporary Australian painting. The finalists’ exhibition is on view until 2 November.

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IMAGE:
Piano Nobile (reprise 1) 2025
oil on linen

James Drinkwater has featured in ART-CLE Issue 02, 2024:

Known for his raucous yet meticulously composed paintings, James Drinkwater is one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists. Yet, the words ‘contemporary’ and ‘artist’ are not necessarily ones Drinkwater would use to describe himself. He prefers the term ‘painter’, and he is a gestural one at that, drawing on influences from the vast legacy of Australian, British, American and French modern art he became obsessed with as a child growing up in Newcastle, New South Wales. Drinkwater says he started drawing and painting incessantly from the age of five, after becoming taken with the small landscape paintings his aunt would work on at her kitchen table.

Drinkwater’s talent was recognised and nurtured early on, not just by his parents and those around him but also by the art world itself. During our conversation, he fields a call from his dad, who wants to come around and see his recent paintings. “It’s never ideal, the time he wants to come,” Drinkwater says after hanging up. “But I’m never going to say no to that, it’s fuel. You talk about fathers not approving of their kids doing art… artists like Clarice Beckett, you know. My dad was there in the garage with me, standing with a ciggy and a chardonnay just going, ‘Oh, bloody brilliant James. Brilliant. Michelle, come look!’

Between the ages of eight and eighteen, he attended Ron Hartree’s now-closed art school in Newcastle and visited exhibitions whenever his parents could take him. He later attended the National Art School in Sydney—only for one year, before getting restless—and then moved to Melbourne, where he met his now-wife, the painter and performance artist Lottie Consalvo. The pair soon moved to Berlin, where they lived for three years before relocating back to Newcastle in search of cheaper studio space and a quieter life.

In 2014, aged thirty, he won the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, which took his family— then-newly expanded to three with the arrival of his first child, Vincenzo—to the Cité des Arts in Paris for three months and a further three travelling. Fast forward to June 2023, almost a decade on, and a survey exhibition at Canberra’s Drill Hall Gallery—James Drinkwater: at mid-career, curated by Terence Maloon—announced without hesitation Drinkwater’s arrival at that often tenuous artistic milestone.

Drinkwater’s paintings are defined by their expressive use of colour. They are rich in matter, working texture and colour into abstract yet familiar figures, landscapes and interiors that speak of his experiences both real and imagined. In subject, his work draws heavily on the intimacy of his family life, the oceanic environment in which he lives, the broader Australian landscape and the people and places with which he interacts in his movements and travels. As was the case for the 20th century painters Drinkwater has so admired, his own exploration of this personal iconography at once allows insight into his subjective experience and offers something of our shared world to dive into.

- Emma Pegrum, ART-CLE

IMAGE:

James Drinkwater, courtesy Nic Gossage

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James Drinkwater's new publication 'I Love You More Than Paintings. Works 2008-2024' has been released. Containing a comprehensive survey of James Drinkwater's artworks to date, as well as writings from Louise Martin-Chew, Ineke Dane, and Nicholas Thompson.

“James Drinkwater paintings are physical, muscular, messy - articulating something that Picasso started - blending nameable and unnameable or recognisable imagery with nondescript painted signs, dancing in a frenetic ballet of attack after attack, sometimes confounding sometimes parting the seas of expression to a clear cohesive rhythm where painted cacophony reigns, not over matter but out of matter. Personal, familial, local of somewhere faraway and right around the corner.”

Julian Schnabel

IMAGE:

Cover of 'I Love You More Than Paintings. Works 2008-2024' by James Drinkwater

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James Drinkwater is included in the 2023 Salon des Refusés with his painting 'Your world is ever new' (2022).

On view at the S. H. Ervin Gallery, Millers Point, Sydney

IMAGE:
James Drinkwater
'Your world is ever new' 2022
oil on linen
138 x 168 cm

James Drinkwater At Mid Career curated by Terence Maloon, Drill Hall Gallery, ANU Canberra

'Early recognised as an exceptional talent, James Drinkwater has never toned-down the intensity and bravura of his approach to painting. His work has mined a vast legacy of modern art – Australian, British, American, French – as if all of it remains relevant, fresh and available to him. Now, on the brink of turning 40, this is the first survey of his prodigious past. While his paintings evoke figures, landscapes and interiors, they are also meticulously composed abstractions, distinctive for their complex and opulent fusion of texture, colour and spatial intrigue.'

Exhibition current from 24 June - 20 August, 2023

IMAGE:

Installation view James Drinkwater 'At Mid Career' curated by Terence Maloon.

We are clumsy now on this southern beach 2016

mixed media on board

140 x 120 cm

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Lottie Consalvo and James Drinkwater have created a big-hearted, art-filled home in their terrace house by the sea. James’ art practice incorporates painting, sculpture, drawings and wearable textiles. "Since I was a child, making art was the clearest way I could express myself,” he says. His creativity is nourished by “generosity of any kind, whether it be the human spirit or nature itself".

- Elizabeth Wilson, House & Garden Magazine

IMAGE:

James Drinkwater, courtesy Alana Landsberry

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Written by Louise Martin-Chew