Welcome, hello.

I’m Mignon Steele, an independent artist based in the Illawarra. In recent years I have exhibited in Sydney, Darwin, Melbourne and Wollongong. My ongoing collaborative practice within the multidisciplinary duo Barnacle Studio also allows me to expand upon my individual work into site-specific painting, architectural colour and community design projects. If you’re interested you can find out more about that by clicking on the design menu.

But mostly I paint, and sometimes I make assemblages and sculpture. Lately I’ve been building upon the surface of my paintings with pulped YellowPages phone books. These compositions express my curiosity and reverence towards biological and geological systems at work. My observations compound in fragments of constructed spatial landscapes, and unfurl with echoes of microscopic and celestial organisms. 
I paint from the place where human strangeness and the natural world intersect; from where environmental anxiety and relentless optimism and awkward humour collide.
I paint what I am am compelled to make; to scratch a psychic itch.