About Pia.

Pia is a contemporary artist based in the southern suburbs of Adelaide. She works full-time from her backyard studio, nestled within a flourishing garden. Born and raised in Adelaide, she spent time living abroad before returning home to pursue a creative life that weaves together her love of nature, art, and memory.

Originally trained and working as a successful landscape designer, Pia's deep connection to gardens traces back to childhood. One of her earliest and formative influences was her great aunt's cottage garden—an enchanting space alive with colour, scent, and story. From taking cuttings as a child to cultivating a garden from broken concrete on the wharf where she grew up, Pia has long used plants to make meaning and beauty from her surroundings.

She began painting seriously as a teenager, selling early works through a local café after lessons with a family friend. But it was during early motherhood that her creative practice returned in full. What started with casual ceramics classes evolved into a full-time, self-directed art practice. Today, she works fluidly across acrylic painting and hand-built ceramics, moving between mediums as a natural part of her process.

Pia's vibrant floral still lifes and nostalgic ceramic pieces are rich with memory and rooted in place. The painting and ceramics reference and inspire one another - the two threads of her creative practice in constant conversation. Familiar domestic objects—teacups, platters, vases—appear frequently in her work, not as props, but as vessels of story and connection. Her paintings and ceramics are highly tactile; each piece carries visible evidence of its making. Marks are left intentionally—brushstrokes, impressions, and textures that allow the viewer to read the history of the work.

Bold, bright, and rhythmic, Pia builds her paintings and ceramics through layers of intuitive mark-making. Each piece is shaped by a process of adding and then pruning, mirroring the gestures of gardening. The result is work that speaks to home's comfort, beauty, and quiet drama. Pia invites viewers to see her pieces not just as artworks but as future heirlooms—objects that hold memories. 

Artist Statement 

I grew up on a wharf in Port Adelaide without a garden. But each week, we would visit my great aunt, whose rambling cottage garden became my first creative sanctuary. We'd sit in the cool shade, sipping from her heirloom china. Those moments—quiet, beautiful and full of life—formed the foundation of everything I do: landscape design, painting or ceramics.

As a child, her garden inspired me to create one of my own. I began by breaking up concrete in our courtyard and planting gifted cuttings. That act was transformative. It taught me that art and gardening are about fostering, dreaming, clearing space and watching things grow. They're also part of a shared cultural memory—handed down and held close.

Many of the plants in my garden today came from family. I love working with flora, which stirs nostalgia in me and others. Making art is a way to honour and preserve what I cherish. I nurture blooms in the garden, then paint them spilling from heirloom cups—moments made tangible.

When my children were small, I took a ceramics class and fell in love with the slow, tactile rhythm of the work. It mirrored what I loved about painting and gardening: presence, process and transformation. Ceramics are timeless—pots can surface thousands of years after they're made, still holding meaning. I often think of my pieces as future heirlooms.

My work is rooted in process. I paint, garden, and build ceramics in my backyard studio, surrounded by living memory. It's a cycle of imagining, growing, and refining—meditative and grounded in the every day but made to last—made to be held, used, and loved by others for years to come.