Avalon Beach Rockpool Series
Exhibition Period: 8 - 20 Oct
Opening Event: Wednesday 14th Oct, 6pm - 8pm
Stephen Denham
Working with an Apple Pencil, Stephen Denham paints by eye directly to a blank digital canvas. Fleeting moments in the natural and built world (skies and screens, seas and city streets) inspire his digital brushes, pencils, crayons, pens and erasers.
Avalon Beach Rockpool Series brings together impressionistic paintings of a single, ever-changing subject. Steve and Emma first discovered the pool as honeymooners in January 2022, and he has returned to it again and again since. He draws on the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who observed that "a man cannot step into the same river twice, because it is not the same river, and he is not the same man."
For Stephen, the same principle applies to a painter and their subject. Both are never static, part of a relationship that endlessly renews itself, and in doing so mirrors all of creation and the arc of human experience.
"Emma and I were married at Manly Beach in January 2022. As much as we love Manly, Avalon Beach unexpectedly became talismanic of our spiritual union when we spent a few nights there prior to our ‘official’ honeymoon at Uluru, Northern Territory.
From the high vantage point at the southern end of the beach, facing out to sea, we discovered ‘Classic Coffee’ food truck, a local legend. But when we walked to the edge, coffees and burritos in hand, and looked far below … we discovered Avalon Beach Rockpool hugging the foot of this rocky promontory.
Thus began a second love affair of an artistic nature, with the impulse to paint glimpses of the pool, ever-changing over days, months, years - building a repertoire of the ‘same’ subject, impressionistic in movement, light and activity."
Avalon Beach Rockpool36, Apple Pencil painting printed to stretched canvas, 111.4cm x 81cm
Artist Bio
Denham has been drawn to the creative arts since the age of nine. As a child he won awards for poetry and art, including cash prizes in the Sun-Herald Junior competition, and as a teenager he excelled in art at school, selling paintings to a loyal following of teachers.
The new millennium brought fresh momentum. Stephen began writing seven days a week, carving out an hour each morning before work, on weekends and on public transport. In 2021 however - as his mother Pam predicted to his astonishment a year or so before it happened - he 'discovered' drawing and painting was back on his to-do list for the first time since his teens - this time using an iPad and an Apple Pencil.
Today Steve is a published author, freelance writer and artist with an extensive and varied output. He won the 2025 Lambing Flat Federation of Australian Writers Poetry Prize and has been regularly shortlisted for several major Australian poetry prizes. One of his Avalon Beach Rockpool paintings was selected as part of Gallery Lane Cove's 'Inaugural Winter Salon' in June this year. And as an entrant in the 2026 Lane Cove Art Award, another work from his rockpool collection was on display in the Gallery's recent exhibition of finalists. Steve is also a member of the 'Artists in Resonance' collective exhibiting every year at 'Blend Cafe', Dougherty Centre, Chatswood since 2022.
