Sky Parra is a Brisbane-based visual artist working with portraiture to communicate a subject’s story, experience, and even their lifetime within a single, static image. Her practice engages with subjectivity, investigating how perception shapes understanding, from which we assign value, meaning, and truth. Through painting, Parra emphasises the presence and agency of her subjects, bridging the space between artist, subject, and viewer to foster recognition and connection. Rendered with sensitivity, her gestural mark-making explores the thresholds of human emotion, deepening their resonance through the tactile, palpable materiality of the paint. Here, each deliberate gesture meets quiet space where the viewer encounters the complexity of the subject, augmenting a sense of intimacy and impact.

Parra earned a BFA from the Queensland College of Art (now Queensland College of Art and Design) in 2022, where she teaches sessionally and is undertaking her Honours research project, DENIED: Portraits of Wrongful Conviction. Her work has been exhibited nationally, with recent exhibitions at Land Street Gallery and Fremantle Prison Galleries. She won the inaugural Behlau Murakami Grant Contemporary Portraiture Prize in 2021 and, later that year, was awarded the AEL Summer Scholarship through the Creative Arts Research Institute. Beyond her studio practice, Parra collaborates with legal professionals, journalists, filmmakers, and specialists from various fields, engaging metropolitan and regional communities through research and public programming. Her work is held in the collection of Fremantle Prison Galleries and in private collections across Australia.