Bella McGoldrick

Bella McGoldrick is an artist based in Byron Bay, Australia, where she lives and works with her husband and their twins. Over the past eight years, she has steadily built a thriving one-woman creative studio that blurs the boundaries between fine art, design, and illustration. With a strong direct-to-collector model, McGoldrick has cultivated a loyal international following drawn to her singular style and the deeply personal nature of her practice. Her work is rooted in a slow, meticulous process and an eye for the quiet poetry of everyday life.

Working predominantly in colored pencil - a medium she has mastered with astonishing control and precision - McGoldrick typically draws from her own photographs, capturing fleeting, tactile moments from daily life. She works section by section, often spending over 100 hours on a single drawing, to build layers of depth, texture, and light. The results are oversized still lifes that shimmer with emotional and visual resonance. Coffee cups, crumpled napkins, tray remnants, and half-eaten desserts become the unlikely subjects of her compositions - objects that, under her care, are elevated into intimate icons of modern culture.

These drawings are not just technical feats; they’re meditations on the beauty of what’s often overlooked. Each piece invites the viewer to slow down, take a second look, and engage with the quiet, often nostalgic emotion embedded in the remnants of routine. The intimacy of a used paper cup, the melting cream of a forgotten dessert - McGoldrick captures these artifacts of lived experience with a sense of tenderness and reverence, preserving their presence in time through painstaking detail.

Her works speak to themes of consumerism, domesticity, memory, and visual culture, but always through a deeply personal and observational lens. As much about process as they are about product, her drawings reflect the labor of looking closely and the joy of finding meaning in the mundane. The juxtaposition of subject and scale creates a tension that is both conceptual and aesthetic - small, disposable items rendered large, permanent, and precious.

Over time, McGoldrick has grown her practice into a contemporary model of artistic entrepreneurship - eschewing traditional gallery representation in favor of building direct relationships with collectors and collaborators. Her editions often sell out quickly, and her original works are sought after by collectors across the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Her secondary market is on the rise. With features in prominent design publications and collaborations with major brands, she continues to expand the reach of her work without compromising the intimacy and authenticity at its core.

In every drawing, Bella McGoldrick invites us to pause - to appreciate the beauty of what's right in front of us, and to find meaning in the remnants of daily life. Her art is a quiet rebellion against haste and disposability, offering instead a space for reflection, presence, and care.