The timed auction ends Thursday August 27th at 8:00pm. Whoever holds the highest bid at the auction closing time wins.
Bridie O'Brien
Strange Brew, 2026
Oil on canvas - Framed in oak
Height 50 cm x Width 70 cm
Artwork is framed and ready to hang & comes with a certificate of authenticity
Starting Bid: $900
Christmas rain clouds rolled over Hyams Beach like they meant trouble.
Swollen. Low. Heavy with light, bruised underneath.
The beach had emptied. Not a soul left. Just the dune buggy tracks from surf patrol carved into the sand like fresh scars.
Out past the headland, the storm was talking to itself, low and mean, still holding back.
All that build-up. No relief.
The sea stayed flat, feigning innocence. The air tasted metallic. It had already made a decision. Even the gulls had cleared out.
I stood there with it, neither of us blinking.
Artist Bio: Bridie O’Brien is a visual artist and lifelong musician, raised on a working farm in country NSW, Australia.
After graduating from the Australian Institute of Music in 1998, she pursued a music career that carried her across continents. She earned a Diploma in Entertainment Design (Illustration) in 2005 and was accepted into the National Art School the following year, though her path ultimately led elsewhere. For the next fifteen years she lived a life shaped by sound and travel, from busking on the streets of Scotland to living on a remote Caribbean island. In 2019 she toured nationally with Icehouse, The Church, Mental As Anything, and The Sunnyboys while playing lead guitar for Do Ri Mi.
Her thirties brought a turning point during her work as an audio engineer at the Art Gallery of NSW, where overseeing lectures immersed her in the world of art once more. Walking those halls reignited a calling she could no longer ignore.
Since 2020 she has devoted herself to painting the natural world in oil. Working with a palette knife and bold colour, she brings landscapes to life through a language of abstract realism and contemporary impressionism. Her practice is grounded in travel and time outdoors, bushwalking, snow camping, and observing the rhythms of light and land.
Her work has been recognised as a finalist in major national prizes including the Paddington Art Prize, the Lethbridge Landscape Prize, and the National Capital Art Prize. She has exhibited nationally and internationally with shows in Madrid, Austria, and Milan, and her paintings have appeared in magazines and on album covers.
Her creative development has been enriched by self-directed study at some of the world’s great institutions and cultural centres, including the Louvre in France (2019), New York’s gallery circuit (2022), Renaissance collections in Italy (2023), Portugal’s museums (2025), and extensive research travel across continental China and parts of Tibet (2025). Each experience has deepened her commitment to painting as a transformative force.
Every painting she creates is a kind of poem, a dialogue with place, memory, and light. Her aim is to reveal the deep kinship between art and the natural world and the way both invite connection, empathy, and reflection.
After twenty-seven years in Sydney, she has recently settled in Canberra where, surrounded by mountains and bushland, she feels at home and at peace.
Finalist
2021 National Capital Art Prize
2022 Lethbridge Small-Scale Prize
2022 Paddington Art Prize
2023 Lethbridge Landscape Prize Salon des Refusés
2024 Lethbridge Landscape Prize Salon des Refusés
Exhibitions
2021 Innsbruck Art Fair, Austria
2021 The Other Art Fair, Sydney (Dec)
2022 Milano Art Fair, Italy
2022 Van Gogh Art Gallery, Madrid
2022 The Other Art Fair, Sydney (July and Dec)
2022 Solo Exhibition Energy of Risk, Corner Gallery Stanmore
2022 Group Exhibition Interlude, Sheer Gallery
2022 Group Exhibition, Art Goupie, Darlinghurst Road Gallery
2023 The Other Art Fair, Sydney
2024 The Other Art Fair, Sydney and Melbourne
2024 The Affordable Art Fair, Sydney and Melbourne
2024 Solo Exhibition Miles To Go Before I Sleep, Aarwun Gallery Canberra
2025 Solo Exhibition Full Moon Sway, Gallery Alchemy Milton
2025 Affordable Art Fair, Melbourne and Sydney
2026 First Sentier, Tower 3, Barangaroo - solo exhibition
Dimensions:
50 cm x 70 cm