This month celebrated artist Melissa Egan returns to Wagner Contemporary with her highly-anticipated new body of work, ‘Winds of Change’. While all of Egan’s paintings embrace an element of surprise and whimsical sense of humour, this exhibition strikes a deeply personal note, drawing from a store of memories connected to the artist’s early years of life. Egan recently experienced a significant life transition, moving from her long-term residence in Queensland, back to a small town in Tasmania where she grew up. As such, ‘Winds of Change’ represents a celebration of sorts – a coming home to breathtaking landscapes, friendships, history, and, of course, feasts of abundance.The artist’s stunning new series captures her reconnection with place. Windswept skies are imbued with the vivid tones of Tasmania’s clear light, while dry land vegetation and remote mountain ranges evoke sparse, yet grandly rural, vistas that formed the backdrops to her childhood. Here the artist connects with her immediate landscape and describes it in a visual nostalgic narrative that is instantly recognisable. This new body of work continues Egan’s portrayal of the good life, of being comfortable, and of being connected to home, even through change and uncertainty.    Melissa Egan has been a finalist in numerous prizes and awards, including the Archibald Prize, Sulman Prize, Portia Geach Memorial Art Award, Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, Blake Religious Art Prize, Kedumba Drawing Award, Fleurieu Peninsula Biennale Art Prize and Tattersall’s Landscape Art Prize. A regular finalist in the Tattersall’s, Egan was Highly Commended two years in a row, in 2016 and 2017.