Yay, I've finally started my Blog!

I have been wanting to create an Art Blog for quite awhile now and here I finally am. So who am I? Well, I'm an Artist who paints in acrylic and watercolours, and embroiders with both machine and hand embroidery. Above is a hand embroidery on acrylic painted cotton entitled 'Bilby Stars', and it was made September 2008. It was my one of my breakthrough pieces, the one I felt "this is what I've been trying to say, this is what I've been trying to create in my imagery and embroidery".

I love the Australian Aboriginal, and Canadian and American First Nation ideas of having an animal spirit or totem inside all of us. Of feeling connected to certain animals, to all animals. We have such amazing creatures on this planet. I grew up on a sheep station (or ranch as my Canadian friends would say) in outback New South Wales, Australia and it is also where I've been living for the last year. I love walking through the bush, seeing kangaroos, emus, occasionally an echidna, and all the parrots like galahs and Major Mitchell Cockatoos flying, singing.

I lived for about 7 years in Hobart, Tasmania where I completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Painting with minors in Sculpture, Print-Making and Art Theory. In September 2004 I started the Textile Art Program at Capilano College in Vancouver, Canada. Above the photo of the Bilby and next to the photo of me is one of Vancouver at dusk. The program was 2 years but I ended up staying an extra year to do a Textile Arts Advanced Certificate. It was the best 3 years of my life thus far. I learnt so many things in the course, pushed my art much further and made the best of friends. It had been a dream of mine for a very long time to experience living overseas. Vancouver was the best place for me, I think I will always feel a little bit Canadian. But in my last year there I turned 30 and it felt like a big turning point. More and more of my art was becoming very Australian themed so I decided to come home to settle. I spent the last year on the station with my family, spending time with them and also setting up my studio in my Grandmother's old house. I've been working on my art almost every day, taking a year out to focus on it. And now I'm moving to Adelaide, (in South Australia) to sell my art and make a home there. But the station will always be home and I'll always come back here.

Ooh, and now I'll post this...drum roll please ;)