Christine Druitt Preston: Ephemeral Beauty | solo exhibition

Christine Druitt Preston’s practice is grounded in a deep curiosity about how people choose to inhabit the world—through the spaces they build, inherit, and eventually leave behind. She is drawn to the quiet poetry of domestic interiors and gardens, and to the way these environments carry memory, shape identity, and bear the imprint of those who once tended to them.

The passing of her mother in 2024 brought time—and its fleeting, tender weight—sharply into focus. The exhibition Ephemeral Beauty – a second life emerges from that moment of rupture. It reflects on the transient beauty of flowers, but also on the fragility of place, memory, and human connection.

In earlier exhibitions such as Olleyland (2019) and Quintet – A Stilled Life (2022), Druitt Preston explored lived-in environments from another era—spaces preserved in memory but slowly slipping from physical reach. Gulgamree in Mudgee is no longer in familiar hands; its garden is now only a ghost. Emerson Road in Rosebank too is preparing for its next chapter. As these spaces change, the works become both witness and relic—monochrome meditations on a moment now passed.

For this new body of work, colour steps into the foreground. Through drawing, painting, and printmaking, Druitt Preston has reimagined earlier lino blocks and created new prints that explore the symbolism of flowers across cultures. Once considered an exclusively feminine subject—“so feminine, so suitable for a woman,” wrote Gerard de Lairesse in 1707—flowers today speak in a broader, more fluid visual language, unconstrained by gender.

These images are not simply botanical studies. They are elegies. They are offerings. And they are attempts to hold something still, if only for a moment, in a world that keeps moving.

Gallery open Saturday - Sunday 11am - 5pm or by appointment Monday - Friday 9519 9677 during exhibitions.

All Images: © Christine Druitt-Preston

• Dysis, 2025. Unique mixed media lino block print on Clairefontaine watercolour paper. Image Size: 90x100cm. Framed Size: 108x118cm. Photographer: Hi Res Digital.

• As the sun sets – Emerson Road_, 20_25. Unique hand painted, manipulated lino block collage on Arches watercolour paper. Image Size: 28x51cm. Framed Size: 44x64cm. Photographer: Hi Res Digital.

• Dreaming of Gulgamree, 2025. Unique hand painted and manipulated lino block print on Wenzhou paper. Image Size: 44x114cm. Framed Size: 62x131cm. Photographer: Hi Res Digital.

• By the pool – garden decoration #I_, 20_25. Unique mixed media lino block collage on Clairefontaine watercolour paper. Image Size: c.33x55cm. Framed Size: 55x75cm. Photographer: Hi Res Digital