Egan, born in Sydney in 1959, has studied at the World College of South East Asia in Singapore, and at the Australian National University. Her works are now held in private and corporate collections throughout Australia and overseas.

Regarded as one of the most popular and dynamic artists of recent time, Melissa Egan’s storytale imagery depicts the unique Australian landscape, animals and a personal interpretation of human life – her work is engaging, colourful and beautiful. Melissa’s new series of paintings attribute their narrative to Australian historical figures and mythology. The iconic characters of colonisation and Australian settlement are given a whimsical twist and placed in Melissa’s distinctive, evocative landscapes.

Melissa Egan’s creations forge fresh imaginative connections between the Australian landscape and the people who inhabit it. Her unique vision attests a breadth of personal experience and a knowledge of Australian history and aesthetic traditions.

Egan is a superb colourist and her craftsmanship lends a new vibrancy to the Australian legacy of “the figure in the landscape”. Taking familiar and cherished aspects of everyday life as inspiration, Egan’s art meditates human relationships and human journeys. It captures, in vivid, lyrical moments, the ways in which we occupy and move through the spaces that surround us. Her talent for evoking narrative makes Egan’s works both winsome and acutely iconic. The figures, often children, who populate Egan’s landscapes are deftly dramatised: they play games, and they seem to play parts. The way in which Egan’s characters belong to their scenes is a product of a fine and intuitive sense of composition. As a result, the appeal of Egan’s works is both enduringly classic, and lively in its immediacy.