London-based Australian painter Jess Cochrane creates figurative oil paintings drawn from the everyday. Focusing on shared rituals such as meals, gatherings, and casual moments, her work explores what we tend to collect and return to, from people and objects to memories and images. Working from photographs from her personal archive, Cochrane translates the digital into the physical, using expressive brushwork to capture the fleeting details of contemporary life.
Selected Works
Selected Works
oil on canvas
150 x 120 cm
oil on canvas
60 x 60 cm
Bathers Scene, 2024.
oil on canvas
120 × 150 × 5 cm
Valentines Day, 2024.
oil on canvas
101 x 76 cm
oil on canvas
50 × 50 cm
oil on canvas
40 x 40 cm
oil on canvas
100 × 70 cm
oil on canvas
40 × 40 cm
By submitting this form, you consent to receive messages from Sullivan + Strumpf. Message frequency varies. You can unsubscribe at any time by replying STOP or clicking the unsubscribe link (where available) in one of our messages.
About
Jess Cochrane
Biography
London-based Australian painter Jess Cochrane creates figurative oil paintings drawn from the everyday. Focusing on shared rituals such as meals, gatherings, and casual moments, her work explores what we tend to collect and return to, from people and objects to memories and images. Working from photographs from her personal archive, Cochrane translates the digital into the physical, using expressive brushwork to capture the fleeting details of contemporary life.
Cochrane’s compositions often involve multiple subjects, referencing Impressionist painting traditions while incorporating distinctly modern cues: smartphones, fashion, and the aesthetics of social media. Nods to artists such as Cezanne, Monet and Gauguin are evident in her approach to colour, gesture, and the depiction of group scenes.
Transcending the boundary between sitter and viewer, Cochrane captures intimate moments of dining, conversation and stillness that revel in ideas of connection, womanhood, identity and privacy. Through her work, she shows the subtle complexities that imbue our everyday moments where generosity and joy operate alongside stress and sorrow; how two truths can exist within the same frame. Pulling us aside and sitting us down across the table, Cochrane encourages us to think about the ways we see, remember and engage with each other.
Cochrane will hold a solo exhibition with Sullivan+Strumpf in February 2026. Recent exhibitions include In My Prime, Sullivan+Strumpf, Melbourne (2025), Beginnings [Duo], Heliconia Projects, Casa de Campo (2025), and It Won’t Last Forever [Solo], Gillian Jason, London (2024).
Jess Cochrane, 2025. Photographed by Chloe Borich.
Sullivan+Strumpf acknowledge the Indigenous People of this land, the traditional custodians on whose Country we work, live and learn. We pay respect to Elders, past and present, and recognise their continued connection to culture, land, waters and community.