Salt and Clay

Salt Air on Skin: On Stillness, Colour, and Feeling Whole
By Tiarna Herczeg

These paintings were made during a time of returning — to myself, to stillness, and to Butchulla Country, following the passing of my grandmother. I spent time in her home, in the salt air of Hervey Bay, where everything seemed to slow down. The air in May there has a softness that you feel in your body. It holds you. Even through grief, I found a sense of calm — a moment where everything, just briefly, felt whole.

The work carries that moment. Not in a literal or narrative way, but in feeling. I’m not trying to explain the energy behind it — I’m moving it, translating it into form. I work intuitively, without plans. The colours and shapes come from memory and sensation: the land, the sky, the warmth of light on skin, stories held in soil. The stillness I found is not empty — it’s spacious. That’s what I’m painting toward.

Colour plays a big role in this — it holds so much more than people realise. Sky blues, sandy ochres, and warm neutrals… they don’t just look like a place, they feel like one. I think colour can speak in ways words can’t. It holds grief, breath, rest, memory. For me, colour isn’t decoration or theory — it’s a way of communicating what can’t be named. It’s ancestral and emotional. It’s the body remembering.

When I paint, I let gestures guide me. I’m not trying to control the outcome — I’m listening to what needs to come through. I think of gestures as something inherited. It’s not just me painting; it’s all the places and people that make me who I am. I think about my identity a lot — being Yalanji, Kuku Nyungkul and Hungarian — and painting is how I stay connected to those roots, even when I’ve had to move. It keeps me grounded.

The way the colours meet on the canvas — resting beside one another like generations — reflects that. My work is about relationships: between memory and place, between body and land, between silence and sound. I’m drawn to painting because it allows me to create space. Not just physical space, but emotional and spiritual space. A space where you can pause, sit with feeling, and maybe find a small moment of peace.

I’ve also been thinking about how time moves differently in stillness. I’m interested in the way art can hold a moment — how it shifts our perception and invites us to slow down. But I want to understand that in a way that reflects my cultural knowledge. For me, time isn’t linear, and silence isn’t empty. Country holds memory, spirit, and knowledge — and through painting, I’m listening to that. I’m responding to it. It’s my way of being present, of honouring what’s passed through me.

                               

Water falls from the canopy
Acrylic on canvas
120x150cmThere’s a calm here, a sense of being sheltered. The painting reflects that hush: a reminder of how grounded and small we can feel when we’re surrounded by something ancient and alive. I remember walking through a rainforest of tall shady trees and feeling protected. I stood under them with my mum and dad. I am safe.
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Part of me left
Acrylic on canvas
50x60cmThis painting is an anchor in the collection as it is the one painting that doesnt mark a memory but just embodied feelings. It marks this feeling of emptiness after loss, but is grounded by its colours- blue and orange/ earth and water. The things that hold us and keep us alive- a full circle.
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Still standing
Acrylic on canvas
60x90cm
The form rises with confidence and steadiness, holding space like my family. like me.
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Where the light rests
Acrylic on canvas
60x90cmThe painting isn’t about representing light literally, but emotionally — the feeling of light as a kind of tenderness. I was so present during this time i wasnt present at all, i had time to notice the light hitting the ground, it bouncing off the water and on my skin. I feel this all the time.
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Residue on the clay
Acrylic on canvas
150x120cmA painting that captures the feeling of the sun soaking up the water , the tide going back and seeing the markings of the day on the mud. Each moment a story to be told. The land remembers and never forgets.
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Where the salt cant touch
Acrylic on canvas
50x60cmIt’s a quiet plea, a yearning for something beyond the natural order—something to bend, to shift, to hold onto what feels lost. This work reflects a moment suspended in pain and longing, where the heart resists healing because it is still reaching for what it desperately wishes to keep.
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A place to land
Acrylic on canvas
120x150cm The orange is the grounding aspect- land.
Burgundy the darkness around me.
The green is me - nature.
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Flat water
Acrylic on canvas
150x120cm
Hervey bay is partially enclosed by Kgari so the water is flat. It holds onto things a little longer, but feels calm. 
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Cold clean linen
Acrylic on canvas
120x150cm
A memory of white sheets, wet clothes and washed linen. I see a cycle of women and myself. 
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Grandfather was here
Acrylic on canvas
50x60cm
I see my great Grandfather out in a field. He comes for us when it is our time to go. I remember looking out and knowing... he is making his way.  
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Beneath my feet
Acrylic on canvas
120x150cm
I’m standing on cold tiles after walking on hot concrete.
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He hid under a lillypad
Acrylic on birch
80x100cmThis work holds a memory passed down — one that speaks to survival, silence, and the quiet strength of a child navigating a world shaped by violence.

The title refers to a moment in my great grandfather’s life, a Butchulla man, who once found safety beneath the surface — under a lilypad- in an act of isntinct.

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I dont stop running
Acrylic on canvas
60x90cmThis work kind of marks the edge of something. It’s a reflection of the moment before I allowed myself to be still — before I realised that what I was running from needed to be sat with, not escaped. ︎

On the way to Maryborough
Acrylic on canvas
150x120cmThis work follows a direction — a physical movement through landscape, and the emotional undercurrent that often travels with it. ︎