Window To The Sky

Brooke Whelan

Acrylic on canvas, float framed in Black Timber

94 x 94cm

2026

Brooke and I connected through 'The Next Big Thing Art Prize' in 2024 when we were both finalists at this wonderful prize, The Toowoomba Gallery hosts annually. Brooke’s work has such a beautiful way of capturing the quiet poetry of everyday life — suburban homes, familiar streets, and the subtle moments that often go unnoticed. Through colour, light, and architectural forms, her paintings explore memory, identity, and our connection to home and community in a way that feels both personal and universally relatable.

What I also really admire about Brooke is her genuine enthusiasm for her practice and the wider art community. She brings such warmth, generosity, and passion to everything she does, which makes her work feel even more inviting and sincere.

Artist Statement

My practice explores memory, identity and the understated lyricism of familiar places. I am drawn to overlooked or in-between spaces, those that hold a sense of stillness while quietly suggesting human presence. Working from my own photographs, I translate these scenes into paintings that distill light, colour and atmosphere, allowing narrative to emerge through subtle details and composition. ‘Window To The Sky’ extends this investigation through the image of caravan, time worn and sunlit. It becomes a kind of threshold; a place of looking out and looking in. There’s a stillness here, but a subtle sense of longing, of stories unfolding just beyond the frame as well as suspended in time.