Amber Hearn’s latest body of work, The Shape of Shelter, unfolds within an internal architectural landscape; a space that sits between memory, body, and place. Although traces of the external world are present, the paintings shift away from representing the landscape and move toward exploring the structures through which experience is held and felt.

“When making these works, I experienced myself move as a mirror, both in scale and form, pushing and spilling into the canvas as I brought the forms to life. Searching to find a balance between tension and spaciousness, breathing space and moments of noise, I utilise the landscape or interior to explore more personal narratives, memories, and experiences, allowing them to take form in the works, often through a process of creation and destruction, with layers upon layers taking place in each piece.”

Across the series, the vessel shifts from a recognisable form into something more immersive, less an object to observe and more a space to enter. Here, the body becomes a site of shelter, a place formed over time, where protection and vulnerability exist together, and where what is held can shift, soften, expand, and dissolve.

Through layering, repetition, and primal gesture, Hearn’s visual language continues to evolve through a raw, intuitive, and deliberate approach. Rooted in a personal inheritance from a long line of farming women, where connection to the landscape is both lived and remembered, the work is informed by ancient matriarchal systems and the continuity of embodied practices. It traces lineage and what is carried through women across time. Across this body of work, a sense of somatic history emerges, something held, carried, and at times overflowing.