Collection Thirty Five | Before They Drift Away

Michaela Laurie lives and works in country New South Wales just south of Canberra. She studied Fine Arts at the University of Sydney, Australia and also studied etching, lithography, gouache, watercolour and life drawing at art colleges in Sydney. She moved from Sydney in 2002 with her husband and children to a property called “Wren’s Nest’ where she continues to live and work in her studio. Michaela is fascinated by layering of lines and depth of colour to create texture and movement. Her technique involves scribbling with pen and ink and then 'painting’ with coloured pencils. The coloured pencil medium allows for translucent rich colour to be built up because their waxy consistency allows blending, layering and glazing of the coloured pencil marks. The result is paintings which glow from within.

McCarthy’s plein-air vision of the bush is one of energised colour. Born in 1966 in Sydney. Paul has been painting for 30 years. His landscapes combine Fauvism, Impressionism and Contemporary Abstraction. His exquisite colour combinations give his paintings an exotic flair, through which he captures and finds a whole new and dramatic light unique to his environment. He has had numerous solo and joint exhibitions both here and overseas, including a joint exhibition in Soho New York in 2001. McCarthy has worked extensively as a community artist including working with a remote aboriginal community, high schools, and acting curator for the Sydney Children’s Hospital. He has also coordinated several groups of volunteers working with groups covering the Sydney Children’s Hospital, the Sydney Cancer Centre at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital as well as adults with disabilities at Studio Artes Hornsby. “I am a colourist at heart and my work reflects a response to my surroundings. My selection enables me to create vivid sequences of colour or subtle muted tones, as the need arises. Working plein air I am able to capture the full range of the vast diversity of the Australian landscape from coast to hinterland and outback.”

Phillip Russell is a Sydney-based artist whose investigation of the Australian bush sees light and coolness penetrating the foliage, describing spirit of the ancient landscape

Having studied at the Julian Ashton Art School and winning the Phillip Musket landscape prize in his final year, Russell travelled across Europe immersing himself in the art history of the continent, bringing home new ideas of painting light and form and continuing his studies with a BFA from Newcastle University. Inspired by the works of Sydney Nolan, Graham Sutherland, Fred Williams and William Robinson, Russell paints with spontaneity but with underlying structure which underpins his design and composition.

He paints with realism but with simplification, illuminating the bush with spirituality to show his connection to the land. Describing his pervasive painted cliffs and trees as ‘negating gravity’, this palpable sense of suspension is created by the register of cool light within his colour. Enhancing forest greens, rusty reds, and champagne golds, through illuminating them with rims of charcoal and burnt sienna, Russell divides the light into patterns of fragmented colour. Immersing himself in the Australian bush, Russell paints the diversity of nature with a keen awareness: Trees are sinuous, shadows evocative and light seeps through the edges. His subject continues to be the source of an enduring challenge to investigate shape, light and colour in nature in all its diversity.

Shannon Garson’s work articulates landscape using domestic pots as vessels for drawing about the strange beauty and wonder to be found in the marginalized eco-systems of the littoral zone. Details of shorelines, rock pools and coastal wallum scrub are revealed in the sgraffito and oxide drawings that crawl over the surface of these delicately thrown porcelain vessels. The act of beach-combing, gleaning and collecting is analogous to the process used in making these works. Her work is inspired by ‘marginal eco systems of tidal zones and endangered paper bark habitats and the rare flora and fauna they contain.’ Juxtaposing classic, clean porcelain vessels with the infinite variety of striations, spots and marks found in nature, Garson’s exceptional pieces tell a story of wallum swampland, of tidal zones, and of endangered wildlife. Descriptions of bird-footprints and tiny flowers completely covered in white hairs encompass the vessels; the myriad detail of the landscape has been collected into marks. A visual language mapping the experience of being in the landscape, creating a dialogue between domestic life and nature. Mediums matter to artists and how they navigate them provides the compass to their creativity. For Shannon Garson, porcelain is the perfect surface for intricate drawings. The delicacy of her line, coupled with the elegant arcs of each piece, was made to deliberately invite touch and a closer more contemplative gaze.

Susan Sheridan has been a professional artist for over forty years. She studied at the National Art School from 1958, with evening classes at the Julian Ashton School and the tutelage of respected art educator and AGNSW gallery director Peter Laverty completing her formal education.
Her evocative depictions of the Australian landscape tell stories of her extensive travels throughout this land; defined by muted tones, atmospheric, impressionistic, sublime, dreamy, understatement; capturing a feeling which convincingly informs her art.
Susan experiences the landscape by absorbing its nature and moods and by combining abstract forms and subtle reality, she leads the viewer into her work leaving just enough room for the imagination to travel.
She has held over 32 solo exhibitions and many combined shows including Sydney Opera House under construction 1970, and the Highlands of New Guinea 1971. As a member of The Australian Watercolour Institute, she was represented in AWI exhibitions in Canada in 1992 and in Hong Kong in 1996. In 1998 two major works were selected to hang in a sponsored exhibition title "Out of Australia - Australian Contemporary Paintings" in Shanghai. Her work has been acquired by many private collectors in Australia and internationally.
Sheridan’s many awards include first prizes at: Mosman Art Prize 1984; Royal Easter Show 1982; Cheltenham GHS 1968; Wee Waa Art Show 1977; Scone Art Show 1983; Bowral Mittagong Art Show 1990, 1991. She has been selected to hang in the Art Gallery of New South Wales Wynne Prize on 7 occasions.

The harvest of a lifetime of international travel and twenty years devoted to full time painting is a deeply idiosyncratic vision. Susanna Chen Chow creates works that are inviting and sustained in strong composition. Every inch of the canvas hums with energy. A colourist whose work bridges landscape and pure abstraction, for over a decade Chen Chow has been honoured with significant art prizes, the most recent being Hunters Hill Morden Acquisitive Prize Art Award, 2014. Accomplished in landscape, this is a painter who also lets the skills of her medium speak for themselves: “I often start a painting without a pre-conceived subject matter. Sometimes the painting itself dictates the images. Creativity can be about looking and making many small decisions during a painting until the subject reveals itself to me.” For Susanna Chen Chow, the light of winter is imbued with violets and crisper tones as if in empathy for a shy sun. When winter comes to the Kimberley it is in fact the wet season, a time to release more colour and diversity to an artists’ palette. Stretching from traditional landscape to colourist abstraction, the deep experience of Susanna Chen Chow dwells in the confidence of her mark and the sensuality of her colour.