Hidden Pearls

Created during my residency at Bundanon, Hidden Pearls draws from my fascination with the meeting points between water, air, and the unseen. The littoral zone has always felt like a threshold to me — a space where life shifts, hides, reveals, and transforms.

This piece carries the memory of exploring the reef as a child, crouched by tidal pools with a stick in hand, tapping gently near clams and watching them close with a soft rush of water. That sense of wonder, mischief, and discovery stayed with me. In the painting, those moments become an echo of curiosity, innocence, and the treasures tucked just beneath the surface.

Hidden Pearls celebrates the quiet magic that lives in between things — between tides, between worlds, between who we were and who we’re becoming. It brings a feeling of depth, playfulness, and mystery to any space.

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Caris is an Australian abstract expressionist artist and arts therapist whose work is deeply rooted in the landscapes and waters that shaped her life. Born into a family who camped yearly on the remote shores of Ningaloo Station, Caris grew up attuned to reef, tide and the quiet beings of rock pools. Later raised by the ocean in Albany on Western Australia’s south coast, she developed a profound connection to water as a companion, teacher and place of spiritual comfort.

Her practice blends intuitive mark making, colour resonance and energy work, drawing on her background in arts therapy, healing modalities and her natural clairvoyant sensitivity. Caris' paintings explore liminality, feminine essence and the unseen currents that move through land and body. She is known for her vulva portrait series and her nature inspired abstractions that invite viewers into a space of self acceptance, reverence and inner quiet.

Working between the emotional and the etheric, Caris creates art that bridges worlds: land and water, seen and felt, solitude and belonging. Her work is both a personal remembrance and a collective offering, inviting others to experience the soft power, peace and connection she has long found in nature.