Saira Ellen K. Spencer is an early-career artist and curator living and working near Denmark on Menang-Bibbulmun land in Nowumbup (Kent River) Great Southern, W.A.

After retiring from a 15-year tattooing career, Saira has become passionate about using art to remind us that we all have common ground with what grows in the ground.

In her arts practice, Saira uses flesh-tones, anthropomorphic forms and textural details taken from nature to draw parallels between phenomena of the natural world and the nature of human experience.

She is influenced by early Australian surrealism, growth and decay cycles, the forests and wetlands surrounding her rural home as well as our, at times, fraught relationship with the worlds around us.

Her current studio practice focuses on the ways rainwater and the physical environment interact with mediums such as acrylic paint, ink and ground pigment. She also experiments with other combinations of natural, synthetic and ‘waste’ materials in both painting and assemblage sculpture.