Collectors Gallery | Group Show

Jane started early in her artistic career working on lino blocks and attended drawing classes with David Newman-White in the evenings. Whilst art ran in her veins with her father being an international artist, Jane from an early age had always wanted to be a graphic designer. Her father supported her in pursing her fondness for design, all the while knowing that she had the raw talent to become an artist. It wasn't until he passed away that she started to take painting seriously. Working mainly in oils, Jane often explores the use of gouache, as painting en plein air is an important part of her process, taking her VW Kombi and dogs along for the ride. The palette in many of her works is paler and the patterns of nature more pronounced. “In my work, I try to reduce detail and use limited use of colour on my palette. I feel it is colour that is the dominant inspiration when I prepare for a painting.” – Jane Canfield The minted shades of green and grey in the painting “In the Valley (Lithgow)” by Jane Canfield encapsulates the stillness of a mountain winter and the sculptural presence within a terrain bare of trees. “My work practice seems to constantly evolve. I feel as an artist that we have to keep pushing ourselves and experimenting, following those elusive primal instincts of feeling that there is something in a work that I want to encourage and bring into my next pieces. It’s like a trail of breadcrumbs and it’s an exciting, butterfly feeling in the pit of my stomach that you know that there is ’something there’ and there is nothing better than that feeling. I’ve heard other artists describe it as a discovery. The works in this collection span two years. All of them have new ‘discoveries’ in various forms and it's these discoveries that keep us working, always striving for the next.”

Lisa Rochfort works in her country studio, ‘Yarrenbool’ in rural NSW in a township called Manilla. The name comes from the Gamilaraay language, it is said to mean ‘winding river’. Manilla lies next to the Bundarra-Barraba, an important bird sanctuary imperative to the conservation of the critically endangered Regent Honeyeater. A better terrain could not be found for an artist embedded in the subtle tides and rare patterns of the natural world. The pale winter light, the wind articulating every moving leaf, schools of birds taking formation in the sky, all of this falls into the lines and forms of her vision. “I don’t look at nature” Rochfort reflects, “I read it and immerse myself deeply within it. Nothing around me is static and as a result, the composition of my large prints and smaller ceramics might be mapped - but they can never fully be planned. I will conceive a carving and then very swiftly depart from it for the next eight hours of work. I guess that is the main difference between art and design. In art, the template always get lost and inevitably, it just transforms.” Intricate, profoundly faceted detail is a hallmark of Rochfort’s work.

Melinda Giblett is an Australian artist for whom the desire to preserve the significance and unique nature of the landscape is an essential subject of her work. Her practice highlights the land, Country, as a model of resilience and hope.
She is known for her expressive paintings and drawings of the Australian bush and desert landscapes. Melinda works directly from nature on frequent hikes and expeditions. As such, the transformative effects of being on Country is a theme that continually inspires and drives her work. Drawing on revelatory moments where the landscape appears in its unique state according to season, Melinda harnesses her intuitive use of colour and the materiality of paint to present new ways of understanding environments.
Melinda is a graduate of COFA (College of Fine Art-University of NSW, Sydney) beginning her career in Visual Arts education, teaching in Sydney and London before presenting her first solo exhibition at GAFFA gallery, Sydney in 2018. In 2022 she completed a significant residency at Bundanon on the Shoalhaven River in southern NSW and in Broken Hill with the BHAE (Broken Hill Art Exchange) in 2021. Her work is held in private collections across Australia.

Mellissa Read-Devine paints a vision of colour and light as a vibrating whole. The shared influences of both painting and lino and wood-cut printing renders the river landscapes of her Hawkesbury home both fervent and immediate. Her large scale landscapes, florals and still lives are both vibrant and engulf, depicting a world where optimistic colour replaces darkness. Mellissa was born in England and as a child emigrated to Australia with her family. Her studio is set in a rural location overlooking the Hawkesbury River (NSW) and is inspiration for her paintings. For the past fifteen years she has continuously studied and practised painting and printmaking honing her art to perfection. The recipient of many Australian art prizes, Mellissa’s style is distinctive with her electric palette and layered application of brush strokes. These characteristics come together presenting unique representations admired by both Australian and international collectors alike.

Sally Stokes is a Sydney based abstract landscape artist who works from her studio amongst the angophoras in Dural and her boatshed studio in a remote part of the Hawkesbury river. Sally has completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Masters of Analytical Psychology. She has had sixteen solo shows and numerous group shows. Stoke’s significant accolades include being a finalist in the Sulman prize, being hung in the 2020 Archibald’s Salon des Refusés, and winning both the 2020 Paddington Art Prize People’s Choice Award and 2021 Muswellbrook Art Prize. Her work can be found within the Public Collections at Hawkesbury Regional Gallery, Artbank, Newcastle Art Gallery and Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre. Many acquisitions have been made to private collectors in Australia and Internationally.