artists
every piece has a story, and every story begins with an artist
WEST AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND · CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURAL ARTIST
Ciara Doelman
Ciara Doelman is a painter and arts writer living on Te Motu-Arai-Roa, where closeness to nature and community shapes her creative practice. Her paintings move through fantastical landscapes of water, witches, planets, fungal networks and monstrous feminine figures while exploring questions of belonging and wealth disparity.
about
Ciara Doelman’s practice is shaped by life on Te Motu-Arai-Roa and the rhythms of the natural environment around her.
Changing weather, tides, seasonal blooms and bird migrations influence her everyday observations, creating a continually shifting landscape from which new images and ideas emerge.
Within her paintings, the natural and imagined worlds come together. Waters, witches, distant planets and interconnected fungal networks exist alongside monstrous feminine figures, forming environments that feel mysterious, expansive and alive.
These fantastical elements allow Ciara to explore contemporary social concerns through a more imaginative visual language. Ideas surrounding belonging, community and disparities of wealth sit beneath the surface of the work.
Her paintings create spaces where ecological systems, mythology and lived experience overlap—worlds in which the feminine can become powerful, unruly and resistant to familiar expectations.
Alongside her painting practice, Ciara works as an arts writer, extending her engagement with contemporary art through language, critical thought and conversation.
Ciara graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2020 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts with First Class Honours.
Her work invites us into imagined landscapes while keeping one foot firmly within the social and environmental realities of the world we share.
Because sometimes fantasy gives us another way to see what is already happening around us.
Ciara Doelman
A sinuous turquoise creature drifts across a pale blue field, bringing together fluid movement and quiet mystery.
In Gentle lives in the sea and sky, Ciara Doelman depicts a long, serpentine creature in shades of teal, emerald and deep blue. Its winding body fills the painting, with delicate scale-like marks and an angular head adding character to its flowing form.
Soft passages of blue and white surround the creature, suggesting an atmosphere somewhere between water and sky. The open background gives its curves room to unfold, creating a dreamlike encounter with an imagined being.
This painting would bring cool colour and curiosity to a living room, study or bedroom, pairing naturally with pale walls, timber and soft neutral furnishings.
Fluid · Dreamlike · Intriguing
Oil on linen · 51 cm wide × 62 cm high × 1.5 cm deep · 2026
Unpainted linen sides ready to hang