About
Laura Oczos (b. 1984, Newcastle) is a painter based in Wollongong, NSW, whose work explores the psychological terrain of remembered landscapes. Working primarily from memory, Oczos creates layered, dreamlike compositions that straddle the line between figuration and abstraction - where tree forms become recurring symbols and familiar terrain shifts into something stranger, quieter, and more emotionally charged.
Working primarily in acrylic with transparent glazes, soft overlays, and recurring tree forms, Oczos creates liminal spaces: psychological landscapes that feel suspended in time, shaped as much by absence and forgetting as by place itself. Her compositions often suggest the aftermath of an unseen event — a stillness that holds unease, fragility, and flickers of light.
Drawing from personal experience, literature, politics, and the natural environment, Oczos builds paintings that respond to the places she’s moved through — both physically and psychologically. While her forms often recall bushland or familiar terrain, they are less tied to specific geography than to the emotional and cultural imprint of landscape. Her work maps internal states as much as external ones, creating scenes where memory, thought, and place blur into something at once intimate and unplaceable.
Laura is represented by Anthea Polson Gallery (QLD)
Prizes / Awards
2024 - Winner The Anthea Polson Gallery Prize, The Paddington Art prize
2024 - Finalist The Paddington Art Prize
2024 - Finalist Lethbridge Landscape Prize
2024 - Finalist Corner Store Gallery Landscape Prize
2023 - Finalist National Contemporary Art Prize
2023 - Finalist Lethbridge 20000
2023 - Finalist Art to Art Unearthed Prize
2023 - ACB Selects National Emerging Art Prize
2022 - Highly Commended National Contemporary Art Prize
2022 - Finalist National Contemporary Art Prize
2022 - Finalist Art to Art Unearthed Prize
2021 - Finalist National Contemporary Art Prize.
2021 - Finalist Lethbridge 20000