Bio
Gunns Marsh 2015
Oil on Matboard
311 x 340
Greg Wood is a contemporary Australian artist known for his evocative and atmospheric landscape paintings. Born in Melbourne in 1976, he studied Fine Arts at the Hobart School of Art in Tasmania. He now lives and works on Dja Dja Wurrung Country in Central Victoria. Deeply engaged with the landscape that surrounds him, Wood has dedicated a full-time practice to his art, developing a strong and personal visual language shaped by memory, intuition, and place.
He has participated in artist residencies in both Tasmania and Brussels, which have further enriched his practice and expanded his understanding of landscape as an emotional and psychological experience.
The absence of narrative and human presence in Wood’s paintings is deliberate. By removing clear references to time, place, or habitation, he creates a space for projection, inviting viewers to bring their own memories, emotions, and associations to the work. The scenes often feel familiar yet remain unplaceable, existing just beyond the boundaries of specific geography or fixed meaning.
Visual elements such as mist, softened horizons, and subtle abstraction enhance this ambiguity,
blurring the line between what is real and what is imagined. His paintings offer something grounded in form while suggesting a more fluid, internal experience.
Wood’s work is not focused on recording the world through observation. Instead, it seeks to evoke the emotional tone of place as it is felt and remembered. These landscapes are drawn from memory and shaped over time by intuition rather than direct experience. Often quiet, ethereal and dreamlike, the paintings are defined by muted tones, diffused light and a reflective stillness. They encourage a slowing down, inviting deeper engagement and contemplation. By stripping away detail and embracing ambiguity, Wood creates introspective environments where the emotional presence of place can be sensed rather than clearly defined. Rather than presenting a narrative, his work offers an open space for personal reflection and connection. These paintings speak to how landscapes are held within us, shaped more by memory and emotion than by precise representation.
Wood has exhibited extensively across Australia in both solo and curated exhibitions. His work has been selected for several major national art prizes, including the John Glover Prize, Bayside Art Prize, the Tattersalls Landscape Art Prize, the Fleurieu Peninsula Biennale Art Prize, and the Kate Derum Award. In 2022, he was awarded the John Leslie Art Prize, one of Australia’s most respected accolades for landscape painting.
His work is held in a number of important public and private collections, including the Gippsland
Art Gallery, the Joyce Nissan Collection, and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre Art Collection. in Melbourne 1976, Greg Wood studied fine arts at Hobart School of Art and now lives and works on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, Central Victorian Goldfields.
Wood’s paintings are psychologically and visually alluring; painted from memory, they convey a profound sense of space. Wood's landscapes show little or no evidence of human habitation, purposely obscured and often further abstracted by mist suspended somewhere between imagination and location.
Wood has been actively painting since the mid-90s and has enjoyed a full-time dedicated art practice for many years and has participated in Artist in Residency programs both Tasmania and in Brussels.
With an extensive exhibition history including both solo and curated exhibitions, Wood's work has been included in several important Australian award exhibitions including the John Glover Prize, Tattersalls Prize, Fleurieu Peninsula Biennale Art Prize, Kate Derum Award and most recently winner of the John Leslie Art Prize 2022.
Wood’s work is held in important private and public collections, including the Gippsland Art Gallery, the Joyce Nissan and Peter Mac Art collections.
GREG WOOD CV
1976 Born Melbourne
1996-98 Bachelor of Fine Art Painting, University of Tasmania
Solo Exhibitions
2025 Traversing, Bett Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania
2024 Luminous Remnants, Otomys, Melbourne
Nature Nuture, Stockroom, Kyneton, Victoria
Dream State, The Finch Project, Dusseldorf, Germany
2023 Re Wilding the West, The Finch Project, Cromwell Place, South Kensington, London
2022 Day In Day Out, Otomys, Melbourne
A Path or Track Laid Down for Walking, Stockroom, Kyneton, Victoria
2021 Nature of Change, Otomys, Melbourne
2020 A Stretch of the Imagined, Fletcher Arts, South Yarra
Scene Afar, Stockroom, Kyneton, Victoria
2019 Scene Afar, ARO Gallery, Sydney
A Stones Throw, James Makin Gallery, Melbourne
2018 Misty Morning, Stockroom, Kyneton, Victoria
Disparate Encounters, James Makin Gallery, Melbourne
2017 I Thought of You, Superdeals, Brussels, Belgium
Liminal Highways, Franque, Melbourne
2016 Slow Release, Stockroom, Kyneton, Victoria
2012 Walking Distance, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
2009 Neither Forgotten nor Kept, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
2007 Between States, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
2006 Movement and Change, Roney Gallery, Sydney
Greg Wood, Area Contemporary Art Space, Melbourne
2005 Recent Works, Lakes Gallery, Paynesville, Victoria
2003 Foreign, Zab Gallery, Melbourne
1998 Transformation, Sidespace, Hobart
Group Exhibitions
2025 Turner and Australia, Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale
London Art Fair, The Finch Project, London
Wander Lust, The Finch Project, London
2024. Between the Pages of the Earth and Sky, Otomys, Melbourne
2023 Surface Area, Brickworks Gallery, Castlema Vic
2021 Spring 1883, Art Fair on line, Otomys
2020 Eternal Shift, Otomys, Melbourne
2018 Mixed Tape, Stockroom, Kyneton, Victori
2017 Stockroom Travels, Cremorne Studios, Melbourne
Mixed Tape, Stockroom, Kyneton, Victoria
2015 Sibling, Mailbox, Melbourne
2013 The Poetry of Earth is Never Dead, Gallerysmith, Melbourne
Time, Launceston, Tasmania
2012 Annual Fundraising Exhibition, West Space, Melbourne
Real Nowhere Land, Manningham Gallery, Manningham City Council
Landforms, Stockroom, Kyneton, Victoria
2011 Annual Fundraising Exhibition, Melbourne
2008 A4 Art 2008, West Space, Melbourne
I can stand you, TCB art inc, Melbourne
2007 Stock Show, Australian Galleries, Melbourne
Art Melbourne, Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne
2006 Portrait of Salote, Seventh Gallery, Melbourne
Art Melbourne, Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne
2005 Melbourne Affordable Art Fair, Exhibition Buildings, Melbourne
Art Sydney, Royal Hall of Industries, Moore Park, Sydney
2004 Melbourne Affordable Art Fair, Exhibition Building, Melbourne
The Woods, Kings ARI, Melbourne
2002 Recent Works, 69 Smith Street, Melbourne
2001 Found Members, Found Project Space, Melbourne
Awards
2025 Finalist, Bayside Painting Prize, Sandringham, Victoria
2024 Finalist, John Leslie Art Prize, Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale
2022 Winner, John Leslie Art Prize, Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale
2019 Finalist, Kate Derum Award for Small Tapestries, Melbourne
Finalist, Bayside Painting Prize, Sandringham, Victoria
2017 Finalist, Kate Derum Award for Small Tapestries, Melbourne
2016 Finalist, M Collection Art Award, Melbourne
2014 Finalist, Glover Prize, Tasmania
High Commended for Creativity, Lethbridge 10000 Small Scale Art Award, Brisbane
2011 Finalist, The Hutchins Art Prize, Tasmania
Finalist, Fleurieu Peninsula Biennale Art Prize, South Australia
Finalist, ANL Maritime Art Prize, Melbourne
Finalist, Mosman Art Prize, Mosman
Finalist, Glover Prize, Tasmania
2010 Finalist, Tattersalls Prize, Brisbane
2007 Finalist, Glover Prize, Tasmania
2006 Finalist, Fleurieu Peninsula Biennale Art Prize, South Australia
Residencies
2024 Artist in Residence Program, Salamanca Art Centre, Artist Cottage
2023 Artist in Residence Program, QBank Gallery, Queenstown, Tasmania
2017 Artist in Residence Program, Superdeals, Brussels, Belgium
Collection
Gippsland Art Gallery, Sale, Vic
Peter Mac Art Collection, Peter MacCullum Cancer Centre, Melbourne
Private Collections
Bibliography
2012 Caroline Field, Walking Distance (catalogue essay) Dan Rue, In Galleries, The Age
2011 Simon Gregg, New Romantics: darkness and light in Australian Art, Australian Scholarly Publishing
2009 Caroline Field, Neither forgotten nor kept (catalogue essay) Dan Rule, Around the Galleries, The Age, 12
September
2006 Penny Webb, Head in the clouds, Sightlines, The Age, 3 February