Dureau’s work engages with the tradition of Western landscape painting, extending it beyond its historical role in shaping perceptions of land, ownership, and human dominance over nature.
Bringing together broad influences – from the atmospheric sublime of 19th-century Romantic painters to the immersive, process-driven approaches of Land Art pioneers like Nancy Holt, and the gestural materiality of Abstract Expressionists like Helen Frankenthaler – her artwork challenges the separation between nature and culture, offering an alternative vision of landscape as a dynamic and interconnected presence. With deep respect for Indigenous knowledge systems, in which kinship extends beyond the human to include land, water, and non-human life, her work explores these relational networks by integrating scientific data, sound, and traditional Western painting methods.
Photograph by Elin Bandmann
Susie Dureau b.1974 in Sydney, Australia, is a contemporary visual artist working across oil painting, digital collages, and light installations
Exploring the unseen forces that connect humanity with the more-than-human world, Dureau’s landscape-based paintings merge reality and imagination. Her practice is rooted in materiality and employs traditional Western oil painting techniques with natural pigments and linens in conversation with digital technologies. Informed by sound and spectrogram imagery, her multi-sensory works translate auditory experiences into visual form, layering coloured primings over months to create depth and optical complexity.
Susie Dureau lives and works on Garigal and Gayamaygal land, Eora Nation, Sydney. She is the recipient of the 2025 Northern Beaches Council Residency Award at Eramboo Artist Environment, and winner of the 2022 Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olly Art Centre Nancy Fairfax (AIR) Award. She was awarded a Northern Beaches Creativity Grant in 2023 towards developing the Soundscape Digital Project. Dureau has been a finalist in many prestigious awards including the Mosman Art Prize, Calleen Art Award, Paddington Art Prize, Albany Art Prize & Ravenswood Art Prize in Australia, and the Agora Gallery International Art Prize, in New York.
In 2021 Susie completed her Master of Fine Arts, at the National Art School, Sydney, and holds a Bachelor of Design Hons (Visual Communications) from the University of Technology, Sydney. In addition Dureau spent three years studying oil painting under the mentorship of artist Charlie Sheard.
Susie Dureau has been represented by Curatorial+Co. Sydney, since 2015.