The Artists Studio
Oil on Canvas
74x85cm
Signed Lower Left
Prov: Private Collection Victoria
$20,000-30,000
Recognised as one of Australia’s foremost contemporary still-life painters, Criss Canning has established a distinguished career spanning more than five decades. Born in Melbourne in 1947, Canning initially pursued classical ballet before turning to painting at seventeen. Her early artistic practice encompassed portraiture and landscape painting, although a period spent living and working in the Greek Islands in 1986 proved decisive in her development. It was during this time that she discovered the possibilities of still-life painting, a genre that would become the principal focus of her career and establish her reputation among Australia’s most accomplished contemporary realist artists.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Canning developed a distinctive artistic practice inspired by flowers, ceramics, textiles and the familiar environments of everyday life. Her professional reputation grew through successful exhibitions in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, while her paintings attracted the attention of prominent collectors and major public institutions. Her association with Margaret Olley, who shared her enthusiasm for still-life painting, further connected Canning to an important tradition within Australian art.
An important development in Canning’s career followed her move to the historic bluestone property known as Burnside, near Ballarat, with her husband, horticulturist David Glenn. The house and surrounding gardens became central to her artistic practice. While floral subjects established her reputation, Canning also produced paintings devoted to the interiors of her home and studio. In 1995, she presented In and Around Burnside at Gould Galleries in Melbourne, an exhibition encompassing interiors, landscapes and still-life paintings inspired by her domestic surroundings. Her continued interest in these subjects is demonstrated by later works including The Artist’s Studio and Waratah and Studio Detail, both documented among her paintings of 2003–04.
Canning’s contribution to Australian painting received substantial institutional recognition in 2007 with the retrospective exhibition Kalianthi: The Art of Criss Canning, presented at Ballarat Fine Art Gallery and Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery. The exhibition coincided with the publication of David Thomas’s monograph The Pursuit of Beauty: The Art of Criss Canning. Her achievements were further recognised in 2022 when she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to the visual arts. The publication of The Paintings of Criss Canning: The House and Garden at Lambley in 2024 provided a further examination of the relationship between her paintings, home and studio.
Represented in major Australian public and private collections, Canning occupies an established position within contemporary Australian painting. Her interior works provide a particularly revealing aspect of her career, documenting the domestic and creative environments from which her celebrated still-life compositions emerged. These paintings demonstrate the breadth of an artistic practice extending beyond the floral subjects for which she is best known.
