Laura Matthews is an award-winning figurative painter based in Sydney.

Born in South Wales in 1964, she studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1983–1989, under the tutelage of leading British painters including William Coldstream and Euan Uglow. She received the Cyril Sweet Award for Best Figurative Painter in 1989, was made a Freeman of the Painters’ and Stainers’ Guild, and is a two-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Bursary, with further travelling scholarships taking her to Italy and France.

Since moving to Australia in 2002, Matthews has developed a distinctive body of work exploring landscape, the figure, light and colour, informed by both her British training and her experience of the Australian environment. She has exhibited extensively in Australia and the UK, including at Nanda\Hobbs and BCFA in Sydney, the Metro Gallery in Melbourne, and the Studio Gallery in Western Australia.

Matthews has been a finalist in numerous major art prizes and in 2019 won the acquisitive Naked and Nude award at the Manning Regional Art Gallery for her painting Sea Creatures. Her work is represented in private and public collections internationally, including the Slade Collection, Manning Regional Art Gallery and the Royal Caribbean Cruise Liners Collection.

Working between observation, photography and memory, Matthews evokes an image and narrative through the physicality of paint and an ongoing exploration of the potential of drawing.