Dream State 3 | Sally Barlow

After completing a Bachelor of Fine Art in Melbourne, majoring in printmaking, Sally Barlow has recently moved back home to Corowa in the Riverina. It’s here, in the landscape that first formed her, that her work feels most resolved.

Sally’s paintings explore rural life, nature and lived experience through a distinctly youthful and feminine lens. Rather than working from photographs, she creates from memory. Leaning into the emotions attached to moments rather than their exact visual record. This shift away from digital reference has introduced a looseness to her work, allowing intuition to guide composition, colour and form.

Her practice remains deliberately exploratory. While grounded in a background of printmaking, she is currently working across oil and acrylic, creating large-scale semi-abstract pieces built through layered, instinctive mark-making.

Her donated work, Dream State 3, reflects this process. The canvas has evolved over time, repeatedly reworked as her emotional landscape shifts.

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