Gallery 4

Amanda Schlesinger-Goss

Held By Water

25 Feb - 8 Mar 2026

Opening night

27 February | 6 - 8 pm

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Sunday: 10 am – 5 pm

Artist Statement

In Held by Water, Amanda Schlesinger-Goss presents a focused series of abstract oil paintings that engage the ocean as both subject and lived, sensory environment. Working within abstraction and landscape, the seascape paintings explore the emotional and kinesthetic experience of immersion—of being buoyed, surrounded, and held by water.

Rather than depicting specific locations, the works occupy a space between recognition and sensation. Shifting perspectives suggest views from within the sea, beneath its surface, toward the shoreline, and upward to the sky as it dissolves into water. These vantage points create an embodied sense of place, positioning the viewer inside the experience of the landscape rather than at a distance from it.

Materiality plays a central role in the work. Layered oil paint builds depth, movement, and luminosity, with blues and greens accumulating in atmospheric fields. Surfaces move between richly textured and smoothly blended passages, echoing the varied rhythms of the ocean, from gentle lapping and buoyant motion to surging and crashing. Variations in color and tone suggest changes in light, time of day, and water depth, as well as the submerged terrain beneath the surface.

While grounded in observation, the paintings are driven by an emotionally charged personal response to landscape. They evoke the corporeal experience of the ocean, as enlivening and renewing.  The temperature and feel of water on the skin, the taste of salt,  the sound and motion of waves are evoked, without relying on literal description.

Held by Water presents the ocean as an immersive and dynamic environment, one that holds the body in constant relation to movement and change. The exhibition offers viewers a contemplative space in which abstraction becomes a means of accessing memory, sensation, and presence within the landscape.

Artist Biography

Lives and works in Melbourne. The artist has had careers in Local Government, Industrial Relations and in Teaching. The artist is presently a fulltime Carer and maintains a studio practice in Brunswick.

Solo Exhibitions

Lacrimal Secretions, Alliance Francaise  St Kilda, 2004

Collaborations

Sluts Dust, Sue Buchanan, Freda Watkin, Amanda Schlesinger-Goss,  May 2001, Linden Gallery,  St Kilda

Group Exhibitions

Celebrating Women curated by Lucy Crosz. 20-31August 2025, Red Gallery, Fitzroy North

Red Salon 12-23 Feb,2024,  Red Gallery, Fitzroy North

Seven Easels Group Show 29 Jan - 9 Feb 2025, Red  Gallery Fitzroy North

120 Degrees of Separation June 2004, Linden, St Kilda

Exploration 5,  May 2004, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne

Women's Salon 04, March 2004, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick

LindenPost Card Show 2004, March 2004, St Kilda

Wallara Travelling Scholarship 2003, VCA, Melbourne

Women's Salon 03, March 2003, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick

Women's Salon 02, March 2002, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick

Women’s Salon 01, March 2001, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick

LindenPost Card Show 2001, March 2001, St Kilda

Awards

National Gallery Woman’s Association Undergraduate Encouragement Award, 2003

Alliance Francaise Award 2003

Art Education

Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) Victorian College of the Arts, 2003

Diploma of Arts (Visual Art) Swinburne University of Technology, 2000

Graduate Diploma of Education (Visual and Performing Arts) RMIT, 1994

Graduate Diploma of Movement and Dance, the University of Melbourne, 1990.