06/02/2026
Introducing 🎨 Shay Pappas 🎨 Lithic Gallery co-founder.
Shay began painting in oils in 2022, following many years spent exploring a range of creative disciplines. This varied background has shaped a practice grounded in curiosity, intuition, and a deep respect for process. Her current work centres on creating highly textured, layered paintings that invite the viewer to slow down, look closer, and form a quiet connection with the natural world.
Working with modelling paste and unconventional tools such as plasterers’ scrapers, drywall tape, and palette knives, Shay builds rich surface depth and expressive mark-making. This tactile approach allows materiality to play a central role, creating movement, energy, and physical presence within each work. Her style is rooted in modern impressionism, influenced by artists including André Kohn and Izumi Kogahara, alongside contemporary Australian painters David Hinchliffe and John Rice.
Rather than depicting landscapes exactly as they appear, Shay seeks to capture how they feel to inhabit. Her work evokes the textures underfoot, the movement of air through trees, and the subtle shifts of colour across sky and earth. As her practice continues to evolve, she explores the balance between control and freedom, representation and abstraction always chasing the feeling of open skies and deep breaths, and inviting viewers to feel grounded, free, and connected to the quiet magic of nature.
pappas.artist
Macedon Ranges, Victoria
art
