
Jen Tarry-Smith, 'The Sun Goes To Sleep In The Sea'
ARTIST STATEMENT
"The Sun Goes To Sleep In The Sea gathers a series of works that follow the movement of light across water; glittering, shifting, dissolving, and returning in changed forms. Through painting and printmaking, I trace these small, fleeting transformations: the sparkle of sunlight on open water, the quiet depth of a rockpool, the soft drift of silver light at dusk.
Each piece gestures toward larger structures of abstraction; how perception changes, how memory gathers and settles, how light both holds and releases form, preserving moments that are felt more than seen. Built through slow, layered processes, the lines move like the tides themselves, ebbing and flowing, marking rhythm and stillness in equal measure.
At the centre of these works is the moment when day slips into night, when the sun appears to sink into the ocean, reframing the sea not as a fixed landscape but as something ever-shifting; a surface where the world is continuously reorganised in shimmer, drift, and quiet unfolding."
BIO
Jennifer Tarry-Smith is a Melbourne-Naarm based artist working in the mediums of printmaking and painting. Since graduating with a Bachelor of Drawing and Printmaking from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2018, Tarry-Smith has exhibited in over 25 national and international exhibitions. She recently completed the Printer Training Program at Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After returning to Australia, she has started Salt Press, a collaborative printmaking workshop specialising in lithography. Tarry-Smith is also a printmaking lecturer and technician at RMIT University.

