Petra Meikle de Vlas

Born and raised in country Victoria, I now call Tropical North Queensland home, where I paint every day, creating abstract mixed media works inspired by the waters of the Great Barrier Reef around me. I have evolved into a full time artist, self-taught, and not sure I was influenced by anyone in par...

Born and raised in country Victoria, I now call Tropical North Queensland home, where I paint every day, creating abstract mixed media works inspired by the waters of the Great Barrier Reef around me. I have evolved into a full time artist, self-taught, and not sure I was influenced by anyone in particular, rather everyone as art in every form it comes in moves and inspires the hell out of me to create. I rarely follow conventional art methods and have developed a technique of my own. In addition to paint brushes, I use my hands, air guns, rods, blow torch, and gravity. Typically working in large formats, I “sculpt” my paintings, starting with a board upon which I layer various materials, as my work is very 3 dimensional. It feels like I'm a sculptor more than a painter sometimes. The texture is the reef, rocks or land mass, the water is the liquid paint, the water spray bottle is the force of nature like rain, the hairdryer is the wind, the blowtorch is the sun, the gravity (tilting the board this way and that) is the tide. I love to experiment with different methods and tools so that I am forever learning.
This series of works is a collection of images from my original paintings. They represents the results of mixing media, with chemistry between pigments creating dynamic compositions as they attract and repel, resulting in interesting intricate formations.
My work was selected to be featured on the Australian TV show “The Block”, as well as "House Rules" which has given my work wide exposure in Australia and beyond. I was also recently awarded Art Lovers Australia’s 2020 People’s Choice Prize for my piece “Ashore.”