Talya Brookman
Talya Brookman is a British abstract painter based in Sydney. Raised between London, Los Angeles and Australia, her practice is shaped by a constant negotiation between movement and stability, and a sensitivity to how place is internalised and carried.
Her work explores an inner ground, a shifting psychological terrain where structure is sought within flux. The paintings emerge through an intuitive, iterative process, guided by a persistent need to resolve what resists order.
Working primarily with oil and ink on canvas, she builds layered surfaces through gesture and wash. Her compositions draw on fractal structures and recurring natural rhythms, allowing forms to surface and dissolve, hovering at the edge of recognition.
Rooted in an early, compulsive need to fill space with pattern and form, this impulse continues to underpin her practice, driving its tension between control and release.
Brookman studied at the Pratt Institute of Fine Art in New York and returned to Sydney in 2009. Her work has been widely exhibited across Australia. In 2025, her painting Tether received the People’s Choice Award at the Fisher’s Ghost Art Prize.
