Toni Vallance was born in Aotearoa New Zealand and currently based in Naarm/Melbourne. She is a visual artist specialising in layered, abstract mixed-media paintings. A long-held, intuitive calling to make art led she to pursue a more fulfilling creative path. In 2017, Tony completed a drawing course and spent time living and working in New York, an experience that profoundly shaped her artistic practice. Since then, her work has been collected internationally.

I am fascinated with the human experience – our fears, loves, passions, anxieties, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to live – we are extraordinarily complex. Using different mediums to express these layers – foundational line drawings represent vulnerability and naivety, layered and protected by paint, texture and colour, representing time and experience – I explore the complexity of human nature, often obliterating parts of the image to depict a sense of duality in the creation and destruction of self.