Artist Moira Pagan began painting for an exhibition called Women as Icons while living in New Zealand.

The works featured women performing ordinary daily tasks with halos or symbolic halos suggesting them as spiritual beings in their everyday lives.

A set of 12 of her paintings displayed in the Glasshouse foyer this week is a continuation of this theme.

"When I became aware The Shift Theatre Company were to bring their production Girls in Grey to the Glasshouse, I thought that my current project would complement the play and provide some further food for thought for the theatre goers."

Pagan had researched the work of nurses who were called to step outside their normal lives into war zones and created three paintings of New Zealand nurses killed when their ship was torpedoed.

"Picking up on the energy associated with the centenary celebrations of Anzac Day I have felt compelled to continue to explore and honour the lives of women who were often unsung heroines of war often battling to be respected and valued even in the midst of their work in the field hospitals.

The collection was inspired by photographs from the Australian War Memorial archive and other sources of nurses serving with the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS).

"My paintings intend to show aspects of their individual personalities but to include in the darkness of the background some suggestion of the horrors they were to experience."