Southern Highlands-based artist Corinne Dany creates dynamic, narrative-rich ceramic sculptures that explore memory, personal history, and the architecture of the mind. Working from Corinne Dany Studios, her creative warehouse space in Mittagong, Corinne engineers highly detailed flights of fancy. Often featuring women, books, and animals, her intricately constructed vessels serve as both functional objects and structural backdrops for personal storytelling.

Growing up in the Blue Mountains and Sydney with her French-immigrant family, Corinne’s visual language was shaped early on within a household defined by the arts. Living above her father’s antiquarian bookshops, she was constantly surrounded by art, books, and antiques. The influence of performance and form was equally pervasive; her sister was immersed in theatre studies, while Corinne watched her mother discover a passion for sculpture under Tom Bass. These influences, alongside childhood trips to the Norman Lindsay Gallery, culminated in her major HSC work—a sculptural adaptation of a Lindsay pen drawing—setting the stage for a lifelong fascination with narrative sculpture.

Despite this early immersion in the arts, Corinne’s path took a detour through a nursing degree and a hiatus from creative pursuits. The turning point back to her artistic roots began at twenty-three while painting for a French furniture maker. She soon built a successful twelve-year career as a family portrait photographer, muralist and graphic designer. Corinne honed her foundational painting skills at the Julian Ashton Art School and through various commissions. Over the next several years, she actively engaged in the local arts community, completing residencies at Dirty Janes and the Milk Factory Gallery in Bowral, and holding successful solo exhibitions, including April Hares and Frivolly.

In late 2024, Corinne relocated to her Mittagong warehouse, establishing Corinne Dany Studios to cultivate a thriving artist collective. It was here that her profound connection to ceramic sculpture was fully awakened. What began as hand-building miniature houses rapidly evolved into complex portrait busts and figurative works.

A pivotal moment in this sculptural evolution was her selection as the inaugural Box Gallery artist for Southern Tablelands Arts. Following the sudden loss of her beloved dog, Corinne created The Gift of Despair, a dynamic paper clay and wire sculpture capturing raw grief and physical elevation through the forms of a woman and an ascending German Shepherd. The emotional depth and technical challenge of this piece cemented sculpture as her primary interest.

Today, Corinne embraces the profound slowing down that clay demands. The fragility of the medium, the meticulous internal structural engineering, and the patience required for firing perfectly align with her desire for a mindful, intentional practice.

Currently, Corinne is expanding on her exploration of the vessel as a physical representation of internal mental space. She is preparing her latest series of ceramic sculptures, Show me a Story, for the upcoming Seven Seasons group exhibition at the Bowral Art Gallery in March 2026. Through this body of work, Corinne continues to let her ideas grow organically, celebrating the beauty of her past and making expansive room for new stories to take root.