Stephanie Tabram
Stephanie Tabram (b. 1959, Potters Bar, United Kingdom) is one of Tasmania’s most accomplished and widely collected contemporary painters, with a practice spanning more than three decades. Since graduating from Sydney’s College of Fine Art in 1989 with a BA in Visual Arts Education, she has developed a distinctive approach to landscape painting that reconciles the traditions of realism with a deeply felt, experiential understanding of place.
Working from her studio in New Norfolk, on the Derwent River, Tabram draws on the pastoral terrain of southern Tasmania — landscapes that are, as she describes them, “deeply familiar… and carry many of the hallmarks of my childhood spent in rural New South Wales.” Her paintings are the result of sustained observation and lived experience, shaped by a daily rhythm of looking. “Before beginning work each day, I spend an hour or two walking along the riverbank,” she says. “It has become a daily meditation: observing the minutiae, the subtle changes, the passing seasons and the life and flow of the river itself.”
At once expansive and intricately detailed, Tabram’s compositions unfold as complex visual fields in which light, atmosphere and texture are held in dynamic equilibrium. Sunlit grasses, silvery waterways, and the brooding drama of Tasmanian skies are brought into luminous focus through a meticulous process of layering in acrylic — a medium she has worked with exclusively since the early 2000s. “Its particular qualities have come to suit my style, or perhaps vice versa,” she reflects. Built gradually over time, each painting resolves into a unified whole — less a static image than a sustained act of looking — an orchestration of shifting tonalities and interlocking elements that invites prolonged engagement.
“I developed a deep connection to landscape painting while living on the Hawkesbury River,” Tabram recalls of her formative years, when a lifelong engagement with the genre began to take shape. “Within realism, I sensed ideas that extended far beyond the simple image.” This sensibility continues to inform her work today, where the descriptive precision of her technique is balanced by an acute awareness of atmosphere and the passage of time.
Reflecting on the singularity of Tabram’s vision, Michael Reid OAM observes: “Motoring around Tasmania, you see Stephanie Tabram there and there again. Stephanie is in the landscape. She captures an aspect of her world so masterfully that the landscape becomes a Tabram — a terrain that speaks specifically to a place, yet becomes all ours.” A major contemporary painter, Tabram has held more than twenty solo exhibitions across Australia and has been recognised in numerous prizes, including the Glover Prize (People’s Choice Award, 2009) and the Hadley’s Art Prize (People’s Choice Award, 2024). Her work is held in significant public and private collections, including Parliament House, Canberra, and Artbank.
For enquiries, please email hughholm@michaelreid.com.au
