artist profile

Biography

Chalie MacRae is a self-taught abstract artist based in Yarraville, Naarm (Melbourne), on the traditional lands of the Bunurong and Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Peoples of the Kulin Nation.

For over a decade, she has developed a distinctive practice deeply informed by her love of hiking and exploring Australian coastal landscapes. Responding to a world shaped by noise, urgency, and constant stimulation, her work explores pace and perception. By translating natural movement, weather, shifts in light, organic shapes, atmosphere, and raw texture into layered, intuitive paintings, she offers a visual language that invites pause and reflection. These experiences are not captured directly, but carried through painting into what she describes as echoes of place.

Chalie's signature Seasons series established her recognisable visual language, while her current evolving body of work, Echoes, deepens this exploration to focus on how we carry environments with us, capturing the quiet yet powerful way nature continues to resonate long after we have stepped away.

Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions and numerous selected group exhibitions and held in private collections across Australia and internationally. Her paintings have been commissioned by collectors and interior designers for private residences locally and abroad, featured in national media and on screen.

In 2023, she transformed an industrial warehouse into her studio and gallery space. Chalie continues to develop and present her work from this space, as well as through selected Australian galleries.

Artist Statement

‘I feel a great sense of freedom and peace when painting. For me, the Australian landscape is my training ground and sanctuary; it leads me to art, and my art leads me back to the landscape in a never-ending cycle of discovery.

At the centre of my practice is a desire to translate these environments into a counter-narrative against the fast pace and constant stimulation of contemporary life. Working intuitively, I build layers of paint gradually through gesture and reflection, capturing sensory memory rather than depicting specific places.

These pieces become abstract echoes of place that move beyond representation, ultimately inviting viewers to step away from urgency, embrace pause, and discover a space of calmness'.

— Chalie MacRae