Nigel Hewitt

Nigel Hewitt is a Perth-based visual artist with a practice spanning nearly five decades. Born in Ulverstone, Tasmania in 1952, he graduated from the Claremont School of Art in 1977 and has been exhibiting since 1978. He returns regularly to Tasmania, whose landscapes remain a deep and ongoing source of inspiration.

His early work grew out of an extended apprenticeship in landscape painting, learning from mentors including colourist George Haynes. That foundation — a keen understanding of tone and the limits of colour in capturing natural light — runs through everything he has made since.

Over time, Hewitt's focus shifted from the land itself to the human mark upon it. Moving from plein air painting into the studio, he began embedding found objects and detritus from the landscape into his paintings, fossilising fragments of the real world into the picture surface. Ash has become an increasingly central material in his work, carrying the weight of Australia's environmental history, climate change, and colonial past in a single gesture.

His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Australia and internationally, including Recinder at Gallery Central, Perth (2018), and ongoing shows with Art Collective WA. In 2015 he was awarded the Glover Prize — then Australia's richest landscape art award — and in 2016 received a Creative Development Fellowship from the Department of Culture and the Arts. His work is held in major collections including the Art Gallery of Western Australia, the University of Western Australia, Artbank, and the Holmes à Court Collection.

Nigel Hewitt Curriculum Vitae