Gallery 4
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
Amanda Schlesinger-Goss 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.
Education
2003 - Bachelor of Fine Art (Painting) Victorian College of the Arts
2000 - Diploma of Arts (Visual Art) Swinburne University of Technology
1994 - Graduate Diploma of Education (Visual and Performing Arts) RMIT
1990 - Graduate Diploma of Movement and Dance, the University of Melbourne
Solo Exhibitions
2026 - Held By Water, Red Gallery, Fitzroy North
2004 - Lacrimal Secretions, Alliance Francaise, St Kilda
Group Exhibitions
2025 - Celebrating Women curated by Lucy Crosz, Red Gallery, Fitzroy North
2024 - Red Salon, Red Gallery, Fitzroy North
2025 - Seven Easels Group Show, Red Gallery Fitzroy North
2004 - 120 Degrees of Separation, Linden, St Kilda
2004 - Exploration 5, Flinders Lane Gallery, Melbourne
2004 - Women's Salon 04, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick
2004 - Linden Postcard Show, St Kilda
2003 - Wallara Travelling Scholarship, VCA, Melbourne
2003 - Women's Salon 03, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick
2002 - Women's Salon 02, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick
2001 - Women’s Salon 01, Counihan Gallery, Brunswick
2001 - Linden Postcard Show, St Kilda
Collaborations
2001 - Sluts Dust, Sue Buchanan, Freda Watkin, Amanda Schlesinger-Goss, Linden Gallery, St Kilda
Awards
2003 - National Gallery Woman’s Association Undergraduate Encouragement Award
2003 - Alliance Francaise Award
