About the artist

Heidi Lustig is an Australian artist known by her pseudonym Violet Portrayal. In her work she aims to conjure worlds that are softly strange, weaving ethereal portraits that hover between reality and reverie. Her graphite and oil works explore themes such as loss, sacrifice, fertility, and surrender.

Heidi’s creative path began with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion Design in 2009, followed by a decade in the Melbourne fashion industry. The birth of her first child during the pandemic sparked a shift, leading her to explore painting as a new and fulfilling self-taught art practice. Her work made its official gallery debut in 2023 with Nanny Goat Gallery, an independent gallery with a focus on imaginative realism, surreal figurative and narrative art located in Petaluma, in the North Bay region of the Bay Area of San Francisco California.

Drawing from the wild abandon of her childhood holidays spent on her grandparents’ remote Australian outback farm as well as her personal battles with secondary infertility and PTSD, Lustig’s art has an intimate and visceral quality to it.

Lustig’s works are in private collections in Australia, USA, UK, London and South Korea.

Scroll down to view upcoming shows.