Yosi Messiah
Original Artworks

Yosi Messiah Art – Paintings

Original Canvas Artworks

Yosi Messiah

Yosi Messiah paints in mixed media on canvas, laying colour down in sections and building brushwork in layers so the surface carries depth and movement. The scale is deliberate. Most works run past a metre and the largest reach 2.85 metres across.

Three subjects recur. Sydney Harbour, worked from close observation of its changing colour and shape. Cherry blossom and garden paintings built from dense, small marks. And figures, mostly women, geishas and dancers, drawn with loose spontaneous line and exaggerated eyes. The figures are imaginary and deliberately open, so the viewer brings their own reading to them.

Messiah studied oil painting with Charlie Sheard in 1996 and life drawing at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney in 1997, and has worked as a full-time artist since. He was a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize in 2010 and 2012, a semi-finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 2012, and a finalist in the Director’s Cut Blake Prize in 2009 and 2010, the Waverley Art Prize in 2009 and the Paddington Art Prize in 2008. Solo exhibitions include Colour Spill and Evok at Richard Martin Art in Sydney, and Harmony of Cultures at Thierry B Gallery in Melbourne.

His paintings are held by Ian Thorpe and Craig Ruddy, and in the collections of Intercontinental Hotels, Hilton Hotels, Marriott North Ryde, the Raptis Group and St Vincent’s Hospital Darlinghurst, along with private and corporate collections in Australia and overseas.

Born in Israel in 1964, Messiah moved to Australia in 1987 and lives and works in Sydney. His paintings are available through SOHO Galleries in Woollahra, priced from $3,200 to $16,000.

Browse the collection

Sydney Harbour paintings | Blossom paintings | Geishas and Ballerinas | Ensemble