Chelsea Lehmann is a painter who lives and works on Gadigal land (Sydney). Lehmann has an exhibition history spanning two decades, and has received numerous awards, grants, and international residencies. 

Her current work explores the representation of the human body, specifically focusing on its fragmentation and evolving meanings in the 21st century. The surfaces of Lehmann’s painting frequently employ a palimpsest of painted layers, allowing earlier traces of work to remain visible. Utilising dramatic formal contrasts and painterly gesture, 

Lehmann emphasises the performativity and artifice of Baroque and surrealist bodies, echoing the way Western art has traditionally grafted constructs of feminine identity onto the illusions of representation itself. Lehmann’s work offers creative interventions which ‘undo’ these constructs by imaging the female form in conflict with painting’s weighty history and stable surfaces. 

Lehmann holds a PhD from UNSW Art & Design (2019).