JUDI SINGLETON
Sydney, Australia | Born 1963
Judi Singleton, born in Hornsby, Sydney in 1963, is an Australian expressionist painter and ceramicist recognised for her exuberant use of colour and distinctive, highly personal imagery. Her paintings are populated by people, mothers and children, birds, animals, trees, buildings and the sea, creating a visual world that is immediately recognisable as her own.
As a young artist Singleton moved to Melbourne and became one of the founding members of ROAR Studios, established in Fitzroy in 1982. ROAR emerged as an energetic alternative to the established Melbourne art scene, bringing together young artists whose work favoured directness, expressive colour and instinctive image-making over more conventional academic approaches. Other artists associated with the group included David Larwill, Mark Schaller, Sarah Faulkner, Peter Ferguson and Karan Hayman.
Singleton subsequently completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Fine Art, specialising in ceramics, at Monash University Peninsula Campus. She has worked professionally as an artist for more than four decades, exhibiting in numerous solo and group exhibitions and working across both painting and ceramics.
Her work is often described as naïve or expressionist, but beneath its apparent spontaneity lies a very individual visual language. Figures, birds, trees and other familiar forms are simplified and surrounded by vigorous lines, symbols and layers of intense colour. Singleton has described her work as having many layers and resembling a visual diary, an idea that helps explain the recurring images drawn from family life, place, nature and personal experience.
After many years working in Melbourne, Singleton moved to Victoria's Mornington Peninsula. Living near the coast brought the sea and surrounding environment increasingly into her work. Motherhood was another important influence, with children, maternal figures, birds and other symbols of family and nurture becoming recurring elements within her paintings.
Singleton has also received recognition for her ceramic practice, winning the Shepparton Art Gallery Ceramics Prize in both 1991 and 1992, followed by the Sorrento Religious Art Prize in 2000. Her work is represented in Australian public and institutional collections, including Parliament House, where two of her 1985 works are held in the Parliament House Art Collection.
The works represented by Plum Gallery capture these characteristic aspects of Singleton's practice particularly well. Mother and Child, Mother and Child III, Big Bird Little Bird and Girl With Birds reveal her continuing fascination with relationships, family and nurturing figures. Birds appear almost as companions within this world, while the human figure is transformed through her simplified forms, strong outlines and expressive colour.
Other works in the collection broaden this picture. Sea Folly reflects Singleton's longstanding relationship with the coast and sea, while Windswept Landscape, Autumn and Blossom demonstrate how landscape and the natural world are reinterpreted through the same energetic visual language. At the Zoo brings together animals, figures and the densely layered imagery that makes her work so immediately engaging.
Across these paintings, Singleton does not attempt to reproduce the visible world literally. Instead, everyday experiences are transformed through colour, gesture and imagination. Human figures, animals and landscape become part of a lively personal mythology in which memories, observations and emotions overlap.
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