2nd Prize Winner
Catherine K. Gyllerstrom Emerging Artist Award
Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2025
Camille Kathryn Wiseman
Title:
“The Fish and the Caretaker”
Medium & Dimensions:
Oil on canvas, 60 x 100 cm.
About the Artist
Camille Kathryn Wiseman is an emerging Australian artist whose practice explores the spiritual and ecological power of water. Drawing from the blue humanities – a field that centres the ocean in cultural and environmental discourse – Camille uses allegory and symbolism to examine modernity’s fraught relationship with the natural world. The fish is a recurring motif in her work, representing our shared lifeblood and the delicate thread between human and nonhuman life. For Camille, water is not just a subject but a sacred force – one that shapes, heals, and binds all living beings. Influenced by time spent in Italy’s cathedrals and museums, her work draws from storytelling and sacred art traditions. Though not raised in a religious household, she finds deep resonance in allegory, using it to tell urgent, contemporary myths. Inspired by William Blake’s visionary world-building, Camille creates symbolic narratives to make sense of our changing planet. Primarily self-taught, Camille spent the past decade immersed in the world of biomedical engineering and clinical prosthetics before turning her full attention to art. In 2024, she curated We Devour the Ocean, a group exhibition that marked a turning point in her artistic practice. She has since exhibited in several group shows and relocated to Europe to pursue formal training and deepen her engagement with painting as a transformative practice.
“The Fish and the Caretaker”: In this work, I depict the Caretaker – guardian of life’s balance – cradling the great fish from the pond of creation. Inspired by myth, the piece explores themes of stewardship, desire, and disruption. The glowing red eggs, taken by a bowerbird enchanted by their beauty, symbolise the fragile balance between wonder and harm. As the Caretaker restores what was lost, a new harmony emerges. This painting reflects on the tension between human longing and ecological responsibility, asking: what happens when beauty is consumed rather than nurtured?
