ABOUT HAYLEY MICHELLE
Hayley Michelle is a contemporary abstract artist based in Melbourne, Australia, creating ethereal yet grounded works inspired by nature, emotion, and memory. Known for her neutral earthy palettes and intuitive layering, her art invites quiet reflection and connection to the natural world.
Drawing on her time living across Eastern Australia, from the Riverina plains to the coastlines of Phillip Island, the granite belt of Queensland to the city rhythms of Melbourne, Hayley’s work holds the emotional residue of place. Each painting is a quiet mapping of memory and feeling, layered with the colours and textures of the land she’s known.
Her creative process is deeply intuitive, guided more by mood and music than by any fixed plan. Influenced by the tones of the natural world — the hush of a forest, the warmth of dusk light, the softness after rain — Hayley paints in a way that allows the work to emerge gently, like a memory returning. Each mark is a kind of conversation between the seen and the felt, the moment and the memory.
Through her art, she hopes to offer a sense of stillness — a moment to pause, breathe, and connect. Whether it evokes nostalgia, longing, or quiet comfort, each piece is made to hold space for the viewer’s own emotional experience.
Hayley’s work has found homes with collectors across Australia and internationally, often chosen for its ability to bring warmth, harmony, and emotional resonance into contemporary interiors. Each piece is created with intention and sensitivity — offered through exclusive collections, limited edition prints, and thoughtfully selected commissions.
Her work is represented in Australia by Arthouse Co, and in the United States by Third & Wall. It is also available directly via her website.
Art that invites stillness, reflection, and emotional connection — grounding your space with calm, beauty, and meaning.
Artist Statement
My work is rooted in a quiet reverence for the natural world — not as a subject to depict, but as a rhythm to move with. Each piece begins as a feeling: a memory carried on the scent of rain, the flicker of dappled light through leaves, or the hush that falls over the land just before night arrives. I paint not to capture the landscape, but to translate what it leaves behind.
I work intuitively, letting the brush respond to music, mood, and memory. My process is layered and slow — a conversation between colour and silence, texture and breath. I gravitate toward earthy palettes and soft tonal shifts, often working with raw canvas, washes, and hand-mixed pigments that echo the hues of the Australian landscape: sun-stained grasses, moody skies, ash-toned rock, and sea-washed stone. I return often to familiar tones and marks — not out of repetition, but because certain things ask to be remembered more than once.
Having lived across Eastern Australia — from the dry, hot stillness of the Riverina to the coastal pull of Phillip Island, the lush rolling hills and granite boulders of the Darling Downs in the Southeast of Queensland, to the pulse of Melbourne, I carry those places in me. My work becomes a kind of map: one made not of lines, but of sensation. Of what it felt like to belong, to revel in natural beauty, to grieve, to watch light fall across a moment and know it would soon pass.
I make art as a way of slowing time. Of offering the viewer a pause — to breathe, reflect, and feel. If my work speaks of anything, it is of presence: a kind of quiet aliveness and juxtaposition found in shadow, light, stillness, movement, and all that lingers long after the moment has gone.