Joshua de Gruchy.

Joshua de Gruchy (b. 1999) is an early-career artist from Western Australia. Choosing an alternative to formal fine arts education, de Gruchy travelled east in search of a new place to develop his painting practice. This led him, unexpectedly, to far western New South Wales, where he spent three years working in the arid landscape surrounding Broken Hill and the old port towns of Wilcannia and Menindee on the Darling (Baaka) River.

During this period, painting en plein air became central to de Gruchy’s process, as he observed the ever-changing colours of the bush before developing works from his field studies later in the studio. It became a matter of finding common ground between abstraction and figuration, working from memory and exploring the relationships between line, form, space and composition.

It was in early 2025 that he was drawn south to Castlemaine, central Victoria where he worked until 2026 before commencing as artist in residence with The Dunmoochin Foundation. It is there that he continues to investigate the role that travel plays in the evolution of his processes and the subject matter of his work.