Charlie Ryan

Charlie Ryan’s work moves between abstraction and representation, drawing out emotional resonance through form, texture, and narrative. Based on the Mornington Peninsula, Ryan first came to attention for his formed natural abstracts, expressive and layered paintings shaped by memory, place, and quiet personal rituals. His practice has since evolved to include more figurative elements, while maintaining a distinctive visual language that transitions fluidly between the abstract and the representational.    

His recent 2025 body of work, Vessels Bloom, marks a turning point. Inspired by his mother’s lifelong ritual of collecting flowers on her daily walks, the series is a deeply felt celebration of everyday beauty and familial connection. During the long lockdowns of 2020, as his mother extended her stays at the artist’s home in Red Hill, Ryan found himself improvising ways to contain the growing abundance of flowers and foliage she would gather, repurposing coffee plungers, jars, and mugs as makeshift vases. These vessels, filled with colour and memory, became the heart of the series: a collection of representational and abstract paintings that reflect on how we carry, contain, and remember the people and moments that shape us. “We ourselves are all vessels of memory,” Ryan says, “as can be the things we keep and grow.”    

This fluid movement between the abstract and the representational now defines Ryan’s evolving practice. Sometimes he paints a pair, one piece leaning into figuration, the other into pure form, allowing both to speak in their own voice. Whether working from natural metaphor or personal ritual, what unites his work is a deep respect for feeling: for the emotional charge of objects, the power of quiet gestures, and the way art can distill “memories within memories” into something that resonates deeply.