Heather STRAKA, Lost in a Dream, 2024, oil on canvas, 1000mm x 740mm (framed).

Lost in a dream sees Heather Straka painting from photographs composed and captured in her studio to create a series of inscrutable portraits set against dreamlike backdrops reminiscent of early colonial landscapes. The resulting paintings are characterised by the artist’s ongoing pursuit of unexpected perspectives. Here, despite the obscure backward viewpoint, these portraits are undeniably intimate – the artist delicately renders a whisp of hair at the nape of a neck, the curve of a bare shoulder, the vulnerable line of a shoulder blade.

Presented in a cameo frames, the works are imbued with a sense of Victorian restraint that resonates with Straka’s subtle and sensitive compositions. Yet there is a sense of unease in these works, a lingering impression that something or someone else is hovering beyond the frame. Whether this is the artist herself or some other more malevolent observer is unclear. Perhaps Straka is positioning the viewer as the intrusive reprobate? The interplay of these various relationships – between artist and subject, subject and viewer, gaze and desire, privacy and surveillance – is explicitly emphasised by a series of accompanying peephole eye paintings.