Elizabeth Kruger: Blushing Banksias

ELIZABETH KRUGER (Australian, b. 1955) Blushing Banksias,  2000 oil on canvas 90 x 150cm Acquired: 109625

Biography:

Elisabeth Kruger was born in Noumea, New Caledonia and lives and works in Canberra.

Kruger completed studies in the visual arts and majored in printmaking at the ANU School of Art.  Four years later, in 1989, she was awarded the prestigious Moët & Chandon Fellowship and following this, she was granted an Arts Council residency at Besozzo, Italy.

Since her first solo exhibition at the Craft Association of the ACT in 1978, she has exhibited extensively in Australia and internationally. In 2010, Kruger was the subject of a major survey exhibition held at the Drill Hall Gallery in Canberra.

She is represented in many major public and corporate collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art at University of WA, Artbank, ACT Legislative Assembly, ANZ Bank and Moët & Chandon (Epernay, France).

Over a four-decade career, Kruger has developed an extensive set of technical and artistic skills. Influenced by her travels and residencies, especially the Moët & Chandon Fellowship and Arts Council residency at Besozzo, Italy, she has incorporated the European glazing technique in her painting: the building of very thin layers of oil paint to create depth in her works.

An ardent gardener, one of Kruger’s frequent sources of inspiration is her garden, which is articulated in many of her works, and in particular, her expansive and ‘immersive’ canvases of flowers and fruits, often with photorealistic fidelity.

See also Untitled (Two Trees) Landscape by Elizabeth Kruger.