M i c h e l l e H i s c o c k
Watercolour is an integral part of my work — my chosen medium for working in the field and for developing compositions in the studio. The studio works usually involve the use of bodycolour and I approach them in a spirit of experimentation.
Inspired by the ink wash drawings of 17th century artists working in Rome, I often work in monochrome. My first response to a landscape motif is usually concerned with the pattern of tonality. While seeking to capture the life and movement of nature — details of rocks, clouds, water or foliage through the gestures of the brush — I’m always aiming for unity and, above all, stillness.
When working in full colour, I enjoy letting the medium of watercolour transform the scene before me into something less literal, opening up the possibility of poetic transformation.
Michelle Hiscock trained at the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University, graduating in 1991. Her early work, small but powerfully evocative landscapes, was well received by both collectors and critics and she has continued since then to develop her pictorial language, exploring the traditions of classical landscape from a contemporary perspective. Both her practice and her research have informed the lectures and master classes for which she is widely known at the National Art School and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Hiscock has lived in Japan and France and travelled widely in Europe, especially Italy. She has held solo exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and has been a finalist in several prestigious art prizes, including the Archibald Prize, Portia Geach Memorial Award, NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize and Gallipoli Art Prize. In 2025, Hiscock won the Portia Geach Memorial Award with her painting, The Weather Watcher after Zurbarán.
Awarded the inaugural artist in residence at St Albans in NSW in 2017, she has taken part in group shows around Australia as well as in London and Switzerland. In 2017, she travelled with a group of 12 artists to the Western Front, which culminated in the NSW regional touring exhibition, Salient: Contemporary Artists at the Western Front. In 2019, she held a survey exhibition at Shoalhaven Regional Gallery entitled Two Rivers and, in 2024, a survey of her sepia watercolours, Landscape and Memory, was held at Rusten House Art Centre in Queanbeyan.
Her work is held in a number of Collections, including the Australian National University, the National Library of Australia, the National Art School, Macquarie Bank and the Australian Catholic University. Michelle Hiscock was elected a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute in 2024.