Since graduating from a Fine Arts degree in 2018 Jen Tarry-Smith has immersed herself into her arts practice, residencies, teaching roles and a busy exhibition calendar.

Her works are delicate, considered and composed whilst also being bold, fluid and exploratory. It is this dichotomy that creates a real dynamism in each work. The Sun Goes to Sleep in the Sea is a body of works that are also felt and not just seen. They appeal in far deeper ways than just being pleasing to the eyes. They are trails and marks that lead the observer on a journey with the artist to a place of rest, beauty and contentedness. 

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.