artist profile

Artist Statement

‘My work responds to the pressure and pace of modern life. I seek to offer a counter-narrative that values mindfulness through art and connection to nature’s beauty.

Working intuitively in a gestural style it’s my intention to create works that echo the Australian landscape yet blur the lines between reality and abstraction, inviting viewers to connect with the work in their own way.

I embrace the process of letting go, welcoming the unexpected. This mirrors nature’s unpredictability, and through painting I find my way back to the landscape.’

— Chalie MacRae

Biography

Chalie MacRae is a self-taught abstract artist based in Melbourne, Australia. A lifelong creative, Chalie first developed a strong connection to art while travelling abroad as a young adult. Later, while working as an intelligence analyst, she returned to her creative practice in search of a more mindful and fulfilling path through art.

Deeply inspired by the beauty and power of nature, Chalie’s work weaves together emotion and landscape. Her paintings evoke a sense of calm, freedom, and connection to self, to place, and to the present moment. She gravitates toward a nature-inspired palette and works in a gestural, intuitive style using acrylics and oils. Her evolving abstract works are heavily influenced by her love of hiking along Australia’s coastlines and hinterlands, and by the way nature continues to resonate with us long after we’ve stepped away.

Chalie’s work has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions and is held in private collections both across Australia and internationally. Her paintings have been commissioned by collectors and interior designers for private residences locally and abroad, featured in national media, on screen, and exhibited multiple times at the internationally recognised Affordable Art Fair in Melbourne.

In 2023, Chalie transformed an industrial warehouse in Yarraville (in Melbourne’s inner west) into her studio gallery. She continues to practice and show her work directly from this space and through selected Australian galleries.