Art, science and innovation have permeated my being since I was a young child. My dad was an engineer and an inventor, mum was an artist and my grandmother took, developed and sold her own photographs. I have always had a strong love of nature which, combined with my inherited skills, led me naturally into drawing and painting from an early age.
My interests include artistic representations of people, animals, birds, buildings, land and seascapes. I attended Roz Kean’s lessons at Meadowbank TAFE on Saturday mornings as well as attending evening college classes. Three Unit Art at high school led me to Alexander Mackie College (City Art Institute) where I studied a Bachelor of Arts in Art Teaching. My association with Roz continued here as she was also lecturing at the time. I later studied collographs and Japanese wood block printing at her studio in Galston.
My focus at uni. was on ceramics, life drawing, soft sculpture, light-room photography, printmaking, Indigenous studies and art history.
I have also studied orthoptics as I hav an interest in perception and the visual system. During this time I was sponsored by OPSM and Designs for Vision to exhibit with the SWARM group at Strawberry Hills. I was privileged enough to join a clinic in inland Australia with the late Fred Hollows who not only inspired my Orthoptics but also art work. It encouraged me to produce multi-dimensional mixed media paintings that could be used to test for ocular dominance when using special glasses. That clinic encouraged me to fundraise for struggling farmers at Bourke, exhibiting as one of the venues for Arcadian Artists.
Art and science have always been linked for me. Juggling working in the art materials industry while working as an orthoptist at the Spastic Centre of NSW made sense to me.
I studied watercolour with Jenny MacNaughton and attended many other workshops, also exhibiting with Castle Hill Art Society. I completed many art works in multiple mediums, performed as a Sand Artist with Scarlet Entertainment over ten years and worked on commissioned watercolour montages of all sizes.
I have judged art shows, taught children and adults, won prizes for my paintings and sold most of what I have produced. My latest professional development was in the field of low chemical printing techniques – waterless lithography. Recent work assessing people with neurological problems at Guide Dogs NSW/ACT has inspired me to work on further developing multi-dimensional art works into commercial Ocular Dominance tests.
Come and try your hand at visual creativity at Bellwood Art Studio. Call me to discuss your artistic needs or commissions. My studio is operational!
