Scrumptious | Petalia Humphreys

Scrumptious Petalia

30 March - 19 April 2026

Scrumptious

Petalia Humphreys

Scrumptious is a selection of works created over the past 4 years that present a playful offering of illusory puzzle-solving.

I am interested in spatial sentience – in embodied knowledge of our familiar environments and how we navigate through time and space. To consider how we perceive, understand and experience space is a shared family trait, passed down through a lineage of artists, designers and woodworkers. My works celebrate these crafts, embracing traditional building design and construction methods with an abstraction art practice.

My candy-coloured paintings invite a perceptual dance between object and audience as iterative patterned forms fold, collapse and expand across spatial planes. The physicality and materiality of the 3D paintings present themselves as static objects and, like Willys de Castro’s Active Objects, engage the perambulatory viewer to consider multiple perspectives in order to fully experience the work.

The surfaces of the hand-built forms are finished with mis-tint acrylic house paint sourced from local paint suppliers, and hand-me-down tins from friends and family. I am fascinated by their stories, and how they speak to the vernacular of location. In delicious colours, some of the most recent I have used are called Mint Pea, Coconut Ice, and Scrumptious.

Petalia Humphreys lives and works on Gubbi Gubbi land on the Sunshine Coast and is Founder/Director of Studio 26.

@petalia_humphreys @studio26art

wrapped and unwrapped, 2024, Lusta and Coconut Ice) on marine hardwood

plywood, 85.5 x 124.5 x 20 cm,

RD unwrapped in green composition, 2025, Low sheen interior/exterior acrylic (Mint Pea, Quarter Pearl Lusta and Nearly Top Notch) on plywood, 60 x 121 cm, $2,600

RD #4, 2025, Low sheen interior/exterior acrylic (Mint Pea, Quarter Pearl Lusta and Nearly Top Notch) on plywood, 27 x 27 x 27 cm, $900

TWCW #1 2026

Acrylic enamel (Scrumptious and Cosmos) and clearcoat on plywood

23 x 23.5 x 5 cm

$550

TWCW #2 2026

Acrylic enamel (Scrumptious and Cosmos) and clearcoat on plywood

23 x 24.5 x 5 cm

$550

TWCW #3 2026

Acrylic enamel (Scrumptious and Cosmos) and clearcoat on plywood

23 x 24 x 5cm

$550

TWCW #4 2026

Acrylic enamel (Scrumptious and Cosmos) and clearcoat on plywood

23 x 24 x 5cm

$550

SFS #2

2026

Interior/exterior acrylic enamel (Nearly Top Notch and Dust Storm) and clearcoat on plywood

56 x 61 x 4 cm

$850

CS #6 2026

Semi-gloss interior/exterior acrylic enamel (Perennial Phlox and Laurel) on plywood

60 x 40 x 40 cm

$1,100

CS #5 2026

Interior/exterior acrylic enamel (Laurel and Nearly Top Notch) and clearcoat on board

60 x 40 x 40 cm

$1,100

SPB #33 in pink composition, 2023, Low sheen interior/exterior acrylic enamel (Pacifika and Colour Me Pink) on solid pine and plywood, 100 x 100 x 20 cm, $2,400

SPB #35, 2023, Low sheen interior/exterior acrylic enamel (Pacifika and Colour Me Pink) on plywood, 28 x 28 x 28 cm, $900

SPB #36, 2024, Low sheen interior/exterior acrylic enamel (Pacifika and Colour Me Pink) on plywood, 18 x 18 x 18 cm, $650

CS #6 deconstructed, 2026, Interior/exterior acrylic enamel (Colour Me Pink and Quarter Pearl Lustre) and clearcoat on pine, 18 x 18 x 18 cm, $650

EPLC deconstructed series #4

Low sheen interior/exterior acrylic (Almost Smitten, marine hardwood plywood, $7,000 (Installation

Detail (EPLC deconstructed series #4)

#4 in second composition, 2025, Smitten, Mint Pea and Quarter Pearl Lusta) on plywood, 20 x 20 x 20cm each, (Installation dimensions variable)

EPLC deconstructed and unwrapped #1, 2026, Interior/exterior acrylic enamel (Scrumptious and Cosmos) and clearcoat on marine hardwood plywood, 30 x 30 cm, $480

EPLC deconstructed and unwrapped #2, 2026, Interior/exterior acrylic enamel (Scrumptious and Cosmos) and clearcoat on marine hardwood plywood, 30 x 30 cm, $480