Internationally Renowned and Multi-Awarded Australian Fine Artist
Florence Biennale 2007 - South Korea 2024 - New York, Turkey & Italy 2025
MILESTONES
HISTORICAL REFERENCE NOTES FOR MAJOR ACHIEVMENTS
Museum Exhibitions & Works for Years - 2010 -2026
These works represent a shift from traditional abstraction, inviting a more meditative and immediate interaction between the artist's imagination and the materials. The focus is on the raw connection that emerges, allowing viewers to engage with the art on a deeper level. Each piece encourages a moment of reflection, bridging the gap between thought and expression. This dynamic interplay opens new avenues for understanding and appreciation in the realm of contemporary art.
EXHIBITION: JOIN HANDS TOGETHER
12th Goeje International Arts Festival 2026
"Tranquility" is included in the Haegeumgang Museum Contemporary Collection
Curatorial Commentary: Executed on heavyweight, cold-pressed Stonehenge paper, "Tranquility" employs layered water-based washes, thinned acrylic, sumi ink, pastel, scraping, and applied metal leaf to construct a stratified surface. The artist's controlled wet-on-wet blooms are countered by incisive scraffito and gestural ink marks that invoke arboreal rhythms. Vertical dripping organizes pictorial depth while horizontal, nebulous masses articulate a suspended topography. Metallic puncta interrupt atmospheric space, introducing tactile relief and reflective counterpoints. Together these techniques synthesize East-Asian ink sensibilities with post-medium mixed-media practice, signaling a methodological shift toward process-visible surfaces where erasure and accretion are legible. The work thus registers a subtle technical milestone in contemporary meditative abstraction, privileging layered materiality over pictorial illusion and emphasizing contemplative material presence.
Archival Index and Reference Specifications:
Artwork Title: "Tranquility" 2018
Size: 56 cm x 76 cm
Materials: Synthetic polymer on Stonehenge-
Historical Significance: Included in the Haegeumgang Contemporary Collection
Artist Statement: "Whilst contemplating the flow of water across the landscape, one reflects on how vast flows of water have shaped the land, eroding down mountains into valleys and plains. A person’s character is formed similarly by the flow of time and circumstance"
Archival Index and Reference Specifications:
Artwork Title: "The silence is deafening" 2025
Size: 25 cm x 25 cm
Materials: Watercolour on D'Arches
Historical Significance: Included in Maltepe University digital gallery of selected international artists.
EXHIBITION: "NOISE" INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION
Maltepe University Turkey 2026
Curatorial Commentary: This work on heavy cold‑pressed paper employs successive water‑based washes and layered acrylic applications to produce a stratified pictorial field. The upper register’s diluted gray washes, laid with broad, horizontal brushstrokes, create a tactile, cloud‑like membrane; the lower register’s saturated pigments—acrylic and watercolor with scumbled pastel or pigment‑stick highlights—form a luminous, abrasive plane of red, orange, and green. Thin glazes alternate with impastoed, scraped marks, producing a palimpsest of surface history. Compositional economy—two broad horizontal bands—recasts landscape conventions into an abstraction that privileges material process over depiction. As a technical moment, the piece synthesizes wet‑on‑wet translucency with abrasive, gestural mark‑making, signaling a shift toward materially expressive, process‑driven atmospheric abstraction.
Artist's Statement: "
This work was created sitting in the desert as a note of what I was experiencing. After a long journey out into the Australian outback on an exploration journey seeking inspiration. The trek is difficult, long and hard, and one takes time out to sit and ponder the distance, the overarching ceiling of the sky, the distant clouds and one wonders if the storm will cut you off from civilisation or if you will be able to get through safely .... sitting there, the silence is deafening.
Joy's work was selected for exhibition in this prestigious show during July 2026 at the Maltepe University in Istanbul, Turkey. The exhibition can be viewed online digitally here.
EXHIBITION: OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
Opening Festival Nov-Dec 2025
"Light washes over the land ll" is included in the
AustrAsia Museum Collection, Medway NSW
Curatorial Commentary: Executed on heavyweight Stonehenge paper float framed under glass, "Light Washes Over the Land ll" employs layered aqueous and plastic media—watercolor, diluted acrylic, and sumi ink, augmented by dry pigment, conte crayon, and scored incisions. Salt-resist and controlled abrasion create crystalline granulations and the network of fissures traversing the composition. Vertically organized strata and a central luminous wash reconfigure landscape into a tectonic schema, asserting material process as subject. The work's integration of wet-on-wet staining with reductive scratching and collage-like accretions evidences a technical synthesis that shifts landscape painting toward tectonic materiality, foregrounding sedimentary time and process rather than pictorial illusion. Its hand-marked veining recalls stratigraphic record keeping, aligning contemporary practice with geological and mnemonic discourse across intergenerational technical vocabularies.
Archival Index and Reference Specifications:
Artwork Title: "Light washes over the land ll" 2020
Size: 56 cm x 76 cm
Materials: Mixed Media and Synthetic Polymer on Stonehenge
Historical Significance: Included in the AustrAsia Museum Collection
Artist Statement: "As the morning light rises over the rocky ridge and washes the land
in the dawn of day, it brings new hope and peace. I am drawn to sit
and meditate on the wisdom contained within ancient rock
formations and the stories contained in those worn and weathered
faces. We can always find hope in nature as we contemplate how
much can be learned both from it and from the ancient sages."
MUSEUM EXHIBITION: OF HEAVEN AND EARTH
Opening Festival AUSTRASIA CULTURAL CENTRE
Medway NSW - Nov-Dec 2025
Curatorial Commentary: In "Salt Lake and Ironstone" the artist employs synthetic polymers on acid free art paper to produce stratified textures that both record and translate sedimentary processes. Layered glazes and scrumbled passages alternate with scraped grounds, exposing preparatory underlayers and emphasizing temporal depth. The sweeping spiral composition repositions the traditional horizontal landscape into a centrifugal field, reworking pictorial space toward a quasi-topographic abstraction. This synthesis of material stratification and compositional reconfiguration marks a stylistic evolution in contemporary landscape practice, where geological time is modelled through painterly sedimentation rather than representational depiction. The work thus registers a technical milestone in the materialization of place as layered process. It consolidates process and place into object.
Archival Index and Reference Specifications:
Artwork Title: "Salt Lake & Ironstone" 2017
Size: 72 cm x 52 cm
Materials: Mixed Media and Synthetic Polymer on Stonehenge
Historical Significance: The opening exhibition for AustrAsia Cultural Centre contained 18 artworks by Engelman and the exhibition was extended to 3 months.
Artist's Statement: "Salt Lake & Ironstone" - Depicting the stillness and silence of the vast expanse of the Australian desert is a recurring theme of Engelman's work. She states "the desert brings me back to centre and in the silence, I realise there is far more that we do not understand in this vast universe. It is humbling." In this exhibition, we review some of the major works of desert explorations over recent years.
2022 - Maya Museum, Cancun Mexico
2024-25 Niagara Falls History Museum
MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS: WATER FOR LIFE
Curatorial Commentary: A multi-panel work made up of four tall vertical panels laid side-by-side, presenting an aerial/abstracted landscape driven by a sinuous river that travels through each panel. The left panels read greener and denser — tessellated marks suggesting vegetation and watery floodplain — while the composition progressively shifts to patched farmland tones, then to warm ochres and pink-gold washes on the far right. Repeated dots, short brush- or tool-marks and layered tonal shifts create texture and the sense of time passing. The rightmost panel is the most abstracted and atmospheric, with the river reduced to pale, meandering lines across a luminous ground. Title and statement anchor the work to a Red River Gum and 300 years of colonisation; exhibition history is international.
Archival Index and Reference Specifications:
Artwork Title: "Riversong"
Size: 100 cm h x 200 cm w synthetic polymers on canvas
Materials: Mixed Media and Synthetic Polymer on Canvas
Historical Significance:
"RIVERSONG" was selected to represent Australia in the "Water for Life" Exhibition. The quadriptych panel shows the desecration of the Murray Darling Basin over 200 years of white settlement as the land has been cleared for agriculture and mining. The soft talc like soils cannot sustain being exposed to desert winds and are lost in huge dust storms that regularly ravage our country. The work was chosen to hang at the entrance to the exhibition as the curators felt it to be such an important statement.
EXHIBITION: "REMIND" INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION
Maltepe University Turkey 2025
Curatorial Commentary: This work on Stonehenge paper employs layered acrylic grounds, translucent pigment glazes, and additive–subtractive surface treatment (gesso and scraping) combined with linear marks added into the ground. The stratified textures—abraded washes, scraped scumbles, and incised calligraphic lines—reconfigure pictorial depth into a lateral, memory-driven topography. Compositionally, horizontal banding and a repeated serrated mark translate avian movement into a rhythmic graphic device, displacing central perspectival focus. Technically, the piece exemplifies a mid‑21st‑century shift toward materially conscious abstraction: drawing, and painterly glaze to make surface itself the archive of perception, marking a stylistic evolution from illusionistic landscape to constructed, time-laden terrain.
Archival Index and Reference Specifications:
Artwork Title: "No sound but the flapping of wings" 2020
Size: 72 cm x 52 cm
Materials: Mixed Media and Synthetic Polymer on Stonehenge
Historical Significance: Included in Maltepe University digital gallery of selected international artists.
Artist's Statement: "No sound but the flapping of wings" - In the vast expanse of the Australian desert, a moment of contemplation unfolds, captured beautifully in this abstract artwork. The painting invites viewers to immerse themselves in the serene energies and profound silence of the landscape, where every brushstroke tells a story of stillness and reflection. Joy's work was selected for exhibition in this prestigious show during July 2025 at the Maltepe University in Istanbul, Turkey. The exhibition can be viewed online digitally here.
Archival Index and Reference Specifications:
Artwork Title: "Eagles of Orion" 2010
Size: 101 cm x 101 cm
Materials: Mixed Media and Synthetic Polymer on Canvas
Historical Significance: Represents the struggles of an artistic life
Curatorial Commentary: Executed on primed canvas, Eagles of Orion employs successive strata of acrylic glaze, oil scumble, ink splatter, metallic leaf, and pasted paper/transfers to produce a materially heterogeneous surface. The work’s technical achievement lies in integrating additive and subtractive processes—scraped grounds, layered washes and punctuated drips—into a legible figuration that oscillates between naturalistic hawk morphology and abstracted landscape. Compositionally, a centralized lunar disc functions as an axial counterpoint to two massed avian forms, creating a sustained horizontal tension resolved through rhythmic feather gestures. By foregrounding surface accretion as structural determinant rather than ornament, the piece stages a stylistic evolution: painterly facture becomes narrative architecture, and mixed-media palimpsestality reframes contemporary representational practice. It indexes postmodern materiality while retaining art-historical continuity and lineage.
Artist's Statement: "This work was featured in "Master Artists to Collect". Engelman was awarded the International Award, the Leonardo da Vinci Award in recognition of her talent and artistic dedication that inspires and enhances contemporary art. Engelman was selected by Francesco Severio Russo and Salvatore Russo., Itaian art critics, curators and judges The Awards Ceremony was held in the Milan Museum of Science and Technolgy, Italy in July 2025. Her work "Eagles of Orion" which shows the struggle of artists in ascending from the chaos of their artistic journey to greater heights was included in the catalogue.
2025 - New York Art Expo, NY
"New Master of Art Award" 2025
"THE COLLECTING OF WISDOM" This work was featured in "Masters of Art to Collect". Engelman was awarded the International Prize, the New Great Masters in New York curated byFrancesco Severio Russo and Salvatore Russo. The Awards Ceremony was held in the Church of the Ascension followed by exhibition of Master works on the Fondazione Effetto Arte Stand at the New York Art Expo.
""The collecting of wisdom"" 76 cm x 56 cm Mixed Media on Stonehenge -
2024 - Haegeumgang Theme Museum, South Korea
"Excellence Award" 2024
"LIGHT WASHES OVER THE LAND" Engelman describes: "As the morning light rises over the rocky ridge and washes the land in the dawn of day, it brings new hope and peace. I am drawn to sit and meditate on the wisdom contained within ancient rock formations and the stories contained in those worn and weathered faces. We can always find hope in nature as we contemplate how much can be learned both from it and from the ancient sages." This was painted especially for the 10th Goeje International Art Festival to which Engelman was invited to represent Australia. Engelman says she hopes the viewer can find peace within the contemplation of this work for the world needs more peace and kindness. The work is now part of the museum's contemporary collection.
"Light washes over the land" 50 cm x 75 cm synthetic polymer on D'Arches 300 gm - Haegeumgang Theme Museum Contemporary Collection
"AFTER THE FIRE", artwork by Engelman was selected by Adelinda Allegretti, curator and art critic, for an exhibition in the CAM Museum. The exhibition "FUOCA CAMMINA CON ME" took its cue from David Lynch's masterpiece ("Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me") and aimed to dissect the theme of fire. The exhibition was the second appointment of a broader project, which started in Venice at ArteSpazioTempo with the exhibition dedicated to the element water ("Floating in the Water") and continued with two other curatorial moments, on earth and air respectively. Engelman's work reflects the devastation left by the wild fires in Australia the previous summer.
"After the fire has died" 75 cm x 75 cm synthetic polymer on canvas - Allegretti Collection Rome
WATER FOR LIFE
"The rainmakers have long gone", artwork by Engelman was selected for this important exhibition raising awareness of the importance of fresh water for life on the planet. It was exhibited along with other artists with international recognition who also share concerns for the health of Mother Earth and the unsustainable practices of humanity.
"The rainmakers have long gone" 180 cm h x 80 cms w synthetic polymers on canvas - POA
MY OWN BACKYARD
Engelman's artwork "Where the wild hollyhock grows" was chosen to be showcased at Artstate in Bathurst in 2018. Produced originally for a 4 year display at Orange Base Hospital, this is a lovely gentle work with fine passages of colours that reflect the region's rural countryside. The painting is now in the collection of Cabonne Council.
Artstate NSW is a new four year project by Regional Arts NSW to shine a light on excellence in regional arts practice and to explore the exciting possibilities for arts and cultural development across the state. From 2017 to 2020, we will be partnering with our network of Regional Arts Development Organisations to bring a stimulating program of regional, national and international speakers to share their experiences and knowledge. A curated arts program will also provide an unprecedented opportunity to see the best the regional NSW has to offer.
Read more:
"Where the wild hollyhocks grow" 100 cm x 100 cm synthetic polymer on canvas - Collection of Cabonne Council
2010 - ORANGE REGIONAL GALLERY
"Through my eyes..." - Survey of over 30 years of painting by Joy Engelman
"Through my eyes...", a survey of over 100 paintings from the life of Joy Engelman was held in Gallery One. The exhibition was opened by Frannie Hopkirk, art critic and writer with an introduction to Engelman by the Director, Alan Sisley. (ref articles here)
Frannie Hopkirk, arts writer and critic (left), Joy Engelman (centre) Alan Sisley, Regional Gallery Director (right)
"The Spirit of the Land", a diptych in collaboration with Wiradjuri Elder, Ngaire (Nyree) Reynolds was selected for the first Drawing Together Awards. The artwork was purchased by the Department of Climate Change and now hangs in the Department for the Environment in Canberra.
"The Spirit of the Land" 180 cm x 180 cm synthetic polymers on canvas - Collection of the Dept of the Environment Canberra ACT
BIENNALE INTERNAZIONALE DELL'ARTE CONTEMPORANEA
"THIS SACRED PLACE", a triptych by Engelman was selected to represent Australia, an exhibition of over 2,500 artworks from 650 artists from over 180 countries. The work featuring the Willandra Heritage Region was awarded a medal for Fifth Premio Pittura with recognition from the 8 judges as an outstanding artwork of excellence. The exhibition was held in the Fortezza di Basso, an ancient fort of the Medici family. My painting is in the above linked video 15:47 in.
