Gallery 1

What Blooms After

11 - 22 Mar 2026

Opening night

13 Mar | 6 - 8 pm

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

Artist Statement

What Blooms After is an inquiry into transformation — what rises, softens and unfolds with time. Each painting emerges through a dialogue between physicality and canvas, where intuition, movement and colour trace the rhythms of change. Working with ink and pigment, Maya allows impulses toward metamorphosis to flow, merge, stain and bloom; materials form like veils, guided by gesture, gravity and breath, so layered surfaces hold a visceral presence and carry the residue of memory. These works capture moments of emergence, revealing spaces where energy and colour are made visible.

Artist Biography

Born in South Africa and based in Melbourne, Maya Lee Cooper is an abstract painter whose practice explores colour, movement, and embodied perception. Her work positions painting as a site of transformation, where sensation, memory, and presence converge.

Informed by a long-standing practice of Ashtanga yoga and meditation, Maya  approaches the canvas as both a physical and contemplative field. Working intuitively with layered pigment and texture, she allows gesture, gravity, and breath to guide the process. Surfaces emerge through accumulation and release, holding traces of action alongside moments of stillness. Colour operates experientially, as a carrier of emotional and spatial resonance.

A recent residency at the Berlin Art Institute expanded her engagement with material spontaneity and the temporal nature of mark-making. The resulting works register movement as residue, framing painting as both event and afterimage.

Maya has exhibited at Brunswick Street Gallery, Red Gallery, Abbotsford Convent, and Black Cat Gallery. Her work is held in private and public collections across Australia.