This March Sal has been invited to exhibit a new body of work at Salerno Gallery in association with Art Month Sydney 2014.

In November 2013 Sal’s first solo exhibtion with Leonard Mattis studio was a great sucess and an exciting foray into new media by this young artist. Featuring paintings, prints and drawings at Leonard Mattis Studio in Surry Hills, the show celebrated an opening night only special byscreening her first animation “One Hundred Thousand Hell Hounds” produced in colaboration with Bass Photography.

Sal Higgens lives in Auckland New Zealand and paints from two studios, one located in rural Auckland bushland and the other; a converted warehouse 3 floors above Sydney’s William Street in Darlinghurst. She is a London born expatriate artist and one time Sydney-sider who, after blossoming as an emerging artist in New Zealand, has returned to settle in the South Pacific. Now three years since her eighteen month sabbatical in the UK she continues to focus her practice on an interlacing of mythologies, weaving her story with those of the histories she encounters on her journies through New Zealand, Australia and overseas, bringing the ingredients back to the melting pot of her studios for further distillation.

Sally Higgens is an award winning painter who was selected a finalist in the Agendo Emerging Artist Award, Melbourne and The Flanagan Art Prize this year. She has been a finalist in the New Zealand National Portrait Award, Waikato Society of Arts Award and Molly Morpeth Canaday Award amongst others. She won the Inaugural Empire National Youth Art Award in 2008. She is recognised for the strength of her drawing, evident in the confidence and emotion of her line. Sal is fast making a name for herself amongst some of New Zealand’s most exciting young emerging artists.

She has had an exciting year; Sal was awarded the prestigious Hill End Residency for July 2013 the resulting works she plans to exhibit in 2014. She has spent much of the year working on a brand new body of work, mining her sketchbooks that are overflowing with inspiration from her recent travels through Mexico and New York.

Click on the link to visit Sal’s successful November 2012 solo show at Salerno Gallery, Glebe, Sydney http://www.salernogallery.com/exhibitions/katabasis-come-on-down-sal-higgens/

Sal’s debut Australian solo show in July 2012 Sheffer Gallery show was featured in the Artist’s Profile section in the June issue of Art Almanac and had “Her Dark Passenger” from the new work featured in Trouble magazine’s June Artist’s Salon issue. While Sal is currently unrepresented in Australia she enjoys the support of Salerno Gallery and Sheffer Gallery in Sydney.

Sally Higgens harks from the wilds of Wandsworth in South London. She was born and raised south of the river and practiced as a painter in South London for over a decade. She studied life drawing at Riversley School of Fine Arts in Chelsea and then a foundation course at Wimbledon School of Art where Sally specialised in Fine Arts, Sculpture and Painting. She was a painter in Brighton for four years then, after graduating from Brighton University Art School in 2003 she embarked on her career as an International Fine Art Painter in London. She has exhibited at galleries in London, Amsterdam, Brighton, Auckland and across New Zealand. Sal has produced several large scale commissioned artworks. These include commissions for Wimbledon Cannizaro Park Open Air Theatre, Quinton Scott Estate Agents in their Kingston and Wimbledon branches and Epsom Playhouse Foyer boasts four large paintings by Sal.

Find Sal on Facebook www.facebook.com/salhiggens.artist