Brănescu Ionel Gabriel - known professionally as Gabriel Branescu - is an Australian artist and meteorologist whose work has been shaped by an unusual geography of life.

Raised near Bran in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, he grew up among forests, mountains and changing skies. An early fascination with clouds became a lifelong relationship with weather, leading from aviation meteorology in the Romanian Air Force to a life across Romania, Canada and Australia - and eventually to Antarctica.

His time as a meteorologist at Casey Station left an enduring visual memory: immense fields of white, violent katabatic winds, isolation and silence. Those experiences continue to inform his work, including Memory of Cold Survival.

His work also turns inward. Inner Worlds explores memory, grief, identity, instinct and perception, while Masquerade considers the faces we present, the roles we inhabit, and what may remain concealed beneath them. Elsewhere, family, animals and seemingly ordinary moments become vessels for memory and meaning.

Across these different bodies of work runs a fascination with what lies beneath what we first see.

From the forests of the Carpathians to the white expanses of Antarctica, from observed weather to inner weather, Gabriel paints the landscapes outside us - and those within.