Home, Place, Country: Darryl Dempster
A NATSIAA finalist in both 2025 and 2026, Darryl Dempster is fast becoming an artist whose voice is impossible to ignore. From Kepa Kurl (Esperance) in Western Australia, his paintings are raw, energetic and deeply personal with explosive colour, gestural mark-making, and a growing collection of symbols that form a visual language entirely his own.
This body of work explores the themes closest to him: family, motherhood, protection, and connection to Country. Ants travel across canvas like family lines. Horses carry stories of belonging. A mother shark holds her young by an umbilical thread. Every mark is guided by feeling and the result is paintings that are impossible to look away from.
Darryl is a neurodiverse and non-verbal artist whose work has been acquired by local government and commissioned for major public projects.
His paintings don’t follow convention. They make their own.
