The Path
Solo exhibition · Field Trip Gallery, Paddington Brisbane · 2026
I entered 2026 in a quite circumspective mood, focused on an exhibition in March, called The Path, which reflected on events of the previous six months.
After a beautiful, inspirational trip to Japan, I became quite ill, spending two months between bed and the emergency room. The Path considers how one event co-creates the next, how through kindness, fortune, illness and loss, a personal path is formed that seems to guide, or sometimes drag, us forward.
My painting studio in the morning. It's my favourite time to work and I normally start well before the sun rises, when the world and ideas are fresh. It also means that if the day goes sideways, I already have a few hours of painting done, so can relax.
Although The Path crosses almost all cultures, it isn't a single idea in various shades. It's a recurring solution to the same human problem of how to move through uncertainty over time. Different cultures encode it differently depending on land, cosmology, and social organisation.
The Eightfold Noble Path is an ethical and behavioural structure for addressing internal chaos through discipline. As the Dao, the path is less about control than alignment, something felt rather than imposed, where veering away requires more effort than following The Way. In other cultures it's part of a continuity across time and place: the path is the land remembering itself through the custodial people.
Artists follow an undefined but unwavering path that seems irresistible to us. Driven by the nature of obsession, obsession becomes the path to clarity. Seeking meaning out of uncertainty, we persistently return to the same questions, scratching at the itch until it yields the light.
At the moment they happen, events carry no inherent meaning. They are not lessons, gifts, nor obstacles. Without labels and categories, events retain their full potential: to become constructive or destructive, clarifying or destabilising. Meaning is not embedded in the event itself, but emerges through our response to it.
Soul Steps
The path of the soul
Soul Steps
Acrylic on Canvas, 2026
97 x 153cm
Soul Steps is the first of the Path series. The stone steps of Kyoto monasteries captivated me from when I first saw them in the background of a reference photo for the commissioned portrait of Michael Myer at the end of 2025. I immediately started a painting about the transition of the soul through life, going from the concrete to the ethereal. Almost as soon as I started painting it, we were gifted tickets to Japan and we were climbing those very steps within a month!
This painting also afforded me the opportunity to use some skills from my days of painting scenery for theatre and film. In particular, it brought me back to painting backdrops with Scenic Studios in Melbourne at the end of last century — the closest I ever got to working in a Renaissance painting studio, using traditional scenic art techniques, which are actually quite akin to large-scale gouache. Such joy!
Soul Steps 2
Acrylic on Canvas, 2026
77 x 122cm
Soul Steps 2 continues the exploration of the soul's transition through life, its movement from the concrete to the ethereal. Whilst in Japan, we spent a lot of time wandering through monasteries and their associated graveyards. I continued my obsession with stairs: where they lead, what they conceal, and how they mirror the uncertainty of our own lives.
This painting, a view in a Japanese cemetery with some stairs disappearing around an overgrown bend, perhaps lets us see the souls wandering, gives us a peek through the shimmering veil that separates dimensions. The Soul Steps paintings were started at a point in my life when the veil seemed a much flimsier barrier than I had normally believed.
One of the deepest and most beautiful impressions that Japanese life and culture left with me was its ethic of restraint, of showing by not revealing, allowing meaning to arise rather than be explained.
Daruma
“Fall seven times, get up eight.”
Perseverance is the rigour of artists. We create out of love, then grow a shell resilient to ignorance, failure and loss. Not so much a romantic notion as an obsessive nature which creates discipline.
Illness imposed stillness. The parting gift from Japan was a prolonged infection that brought mortality into sharp focus while stripping away productivity. During that time, probability and game theory became a parallel language, formalising risk and mirroring lived uncertainty.
The Daruma suggests persistence without guarantee. It's not a devotional object, nor is it initiated formally within Japanese tradition. But it serves as an instrument for thinking through chance, intention, and endurance.
Generally, one eye is painted when setting an intention, and the second when it is fulfilled. I made reversible eyes on the larger Daruma, to allow the ritual to begin again.
Commissioned Works
I love making commissioned works — they are mostly very personal to the client.
The commissioned portrait of Michael Myer, late 2025
Such an absolute pleasure to meet this deep soul!
Vanessa Myer supplied me with reference photos, so I could get a sense of Michael before I met him. There was one where he was standing on the steps of the Chion-in Temple in Kyoto smiling lovingly at the camera (or rather the person holding it). I was so struck by the humanity, openness and love within the image, that I immediately started the first ‘Soul Steps’ painting!
The Sleepers series, which began in 2015,
continues alongside the new work, its figures resting in the liminal space between waking life and whatever lies beneath.
I am frequently commissioned to make these, and I love doing them because I know that they will be works that are treasured by the client for many, many years.
Two Solos
Sona Babajanyan and I often exhibit together, but this time our themes were so diverse, we decided to hold separate solo exhibitions at Field Trip gallery in Paddington, Brisbane
Opening night
Lynette testing a Daruma
August 2026
In August 2026, Billy Shannon and Sona Babajanyan will hold a studio exhibition, where these themes and thoughts will be further developed.