Prudence Flint

Prudence Flint is a Melbourne-based painter celebrated for intimate, figurative works that depict women in quiet, domestic or contemplative settings. Her paintings often feature soft, muted palettes, flattened perspectives, and simplified forms, creating a sense of stillness and psychological depth. Flint’s practice explores identity, solitude, and the everyday, positioning female subjects in spaces that suggest both comfort and ambiguity.

Often the female figure in Flint’s paintings is repeated, she is tall, with wide hips, narrow shoulders, and a small and angular face. In many images she wears her underwear, often foregoing the bottom half. This woman appears in ordinary domestic spaces, for example in front of a mirror or sitting at the end of a mattress, eating fruit with a vacant stare.

Prudence Flint, Red Flag, 2025, oil on Belgian linen, 127.0 × 106.5 cm; Courtesy of Fine Arts, Sydney.

Prudence Flint Prudence Flint’s paintings have the logic of a dream: her female, and occasionally male, subjects are depicted in states of undress, their sensual physicality the primary focus. Pictured in interiors, with convincing yet incongruous objects, her protagonists express a powerful interiority. Flint’s colour palette evokes an earlier era, as do the figures she paints – as though the lives of their mothers or grandmothers are somehow present. This uncanny atmosphere suggests an inheritance of memory, gesture and bodily knowledge – passed down
Maria Zagala, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photograph
  • Interior Spaces and Identity: Flint’s works reflect personal and psychological states through domestic settings.
  • Feminine Subjectivity: Paintings foreground women’s experiences, autonomy, and inner worlds.
  • Colour and Form: Subtle tonal shifts and simplified shapes evoke mood and intimacy.
  • Connection to John Brack: Like Brack, Flint uses composition and restraint to explore social and emotional undercurrents.
  • How does Flint represent women’s experiences in her paintings?
  • What role do colour and composition play in creating mood?
  • How do both artists use everyday settings to comment on broader social ideas?
  • Flint has an interest in the traditions of figurative painting and the representation of women throughout art history. Investigate how women have been represented in throughout art history. Has this depiction changed, if so in what way? Is Flint’s depiction of the female figure different to other representations, if so in what way? Compare this to how men have been depicted in art history.
  • Compare Flint’s approach to figurative painting and domestic interiors with the works by Vanessa Bell and John Brack. What similarities and differences do you notice between theses artists?
  • Paint a portrait of someone you know depicted in a familiar interior space, captured in a moment of pause or reflection. What objects might you include around the person to indicate this is a domestic space? Perhaps they are undertaking an ordinary daily task, like gardening, watching TV, reading or cooking. You might begin by taking some photographs to use as reference for your painting.
  • Flint’s spaces are dotted with all kinds of misplaced objects of unknown significance: a thin rod on the floor, an egg on the bedside, an open guitar case, a religious icon on the bed. Create a series of small painting or drawings of an ordinary domestic object that may seem irrelevant to others but is important to you. It could even be your toothbrush. Use a restricted or monochromatic colour palette in your drawings or paintings.
  • The women that Flint chooses to model for her come with their choice of clothing, a certain body type and posture. Take a series of self-portraits (selfies), where you are in control the clothing you choose and can direct your posture and position. What do your choices say about the person you are?