Shane Pickett
Image source McClung Museum
Shane Pickett (born 1957, Quairading, Western Australia. Died 15 January 2010, Perth, Western Australia) was one of the foremost Nyoongar artists. Combining his deep knowledge and concern for Nyoongar culture with a confident and individual style of gestural abstraction, Pickett created paintings that resonated with a profound but subtle immediacy. Balancing innovation with tradition, modernity with an ancient spirituality, Pickett created a complex visual metaphor for the persistence of Nyoongar culture against the colonising tide of modernity.
During his career, Pickett was selected as a finalist in numerous major art prizes including the Telstra National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award, for which he won the 'Best Painting in a European Medium' category prize in 1986. In 2006 he was awarded first prizes at the Sunshine Coast Art Prize and the Joondalup Invitation Art Award, and in 2007 he was awarded the major prize at the inaugural Drawing Together Art Award.
He has exhibited in every state and territory in Australia, as well as in the United States, Europe, Africa and Asia. His works are held in major private and public collections throughout Australia and internationally.
Visit: Wikipedia, MossensonGalleries
Susan Flavell
Image source Susan Flavell
Susan Flavell employs magical thinking as a political strategy against climate apocalypse. Her art practice reveals notions of the fantastic, the monstrous and the mythical, applying a range of material strategies to create compelling sculptural forms.
Delving into realms of myth, objects, nature, and animals, Flavell invites viewers to contemplate the mystical and otherworldly. Through her use of recycled materials and her exploration of magical thinking, she challenges us to reconsider our relationship with the world around us. Flavell’s art speaks to our collective connection to the environment and the importance of sustainable practices. Her extensive artistic journey, commitment to her craft and teaching history have established her as a prominent figure in the Western Australian art world.
Visit: SusanFlavell, Instagram
Nic Compton
Image source Nic Compton
Nic Compton‘s life as a working artist spans three decades in which he has created significant works that remain in private and public realms.
Raised in Aotearoa (New Zealand), Nic is connected to his tupuna, his Maori ancestors through growing up in the same landscape of hills, rivers and deep gullies inland of Lake Wairarapa and the nearby beaches of the south east coast of the North Island, particularly Riversdale Beach, where his grandmother dove for paua on the rocks her grandparents knew.
Growing up in Aotearoa New Zealand and having respect for his Maori culture and heritage, Nic’s work draws on an ancient sensibility. He has a strong passion for carving natural materials such as timber and stone to create works that provoke thought and wonder.
He demonstrates deep appreciation of the classical styles and of good structure as a strong foundation of sculptural form. He believes the work should carry a sense of energy or personal power and authority much like the Maori mana.
Nic works from a studio in the wheatbelt town of York, Western Australia approximately 100 kilometres east of Perth.
In addition to his more intimate, studio based work, Nic has completed many large scale public artworks that continue to be appreciated and enjoyed by Western Australian communities.
Visit: NicCompton, Instagram
Concreto
Image source Google Maps
Margaret Dillon is a West Australian artist who started Concreto with her husband Simon Gauntlett 30 years ago. For three decades they have used terrazzo and concrete to design and create large scale 3D and 2D artworks, as well as beautiful and unique homewares and furniture.
Visit: concreto, artonthemove
Margaret Dillon
Image source Public Transport Authority
Margaret Dillon is a West Australian artist who started Concreto with her husband 30 years ago. For three decades they have used terrazzo and concrete to design and create large scale 3D and 2D artworks, as well as beautiful and unique homewares and furniture. Margaret also works in fashion and sculpture.
Visit: Concreto, Instagram
Cara Sanders
Image source Cara Sanders
Cara Sanders is a self-taught visual artist based on the Gold Coast. Raised in the Kimberley, her work is deeply rooted in the Australian landscape, shaped by red earth, shifting skies, and an enduring connection to place.
Working with aerial perspectives, organic forms, and layered mark-making, Cara’s large-scale mixed media works explore memory, impermanence, and the emotional pull of the natural world.
Her new series, The Mirage Collection, builds on the success of her sold-out In Our Nature collection. Elevated in palette and scale, this body of work delves into the tension between clarity and illusion, inspired by heat-hazed horizons and the stillness of open country.
Cara has exhibited with Gallery Alchemy, Dust Temple, and Mint Art House, and has completed major commissions across Australia, including the Formula 1, & the Brisbane Lions. Her work has also featured on season eighteen of The Block on Channel Nine nationally.
Visit: carasanders, instagram, galleryalchemy, youtube, owletart
Bevan Honey
Image source Bevan Honey
Bevan Honey was born in Perth in 1968. He received his Bachelor of Arts and Post-Graduate Diploma in Printmaking from Curtin University of Technology.
His solo exhibitions include RDO, Galerie Düsseldorf, WA (2009); plane, Monash University Gallery, Vic (2006); project, Galerie Düsseldorf, WA (2006); Canberra Biennial of Art & Architecture: love is blind, Parliament Triangle, ACT (2005); SPLIT The New Tinsheds Gallery, University of Sydney, NSW (2004) and 1999 Wood Cuts & Charcoals, Fremantle Arts Centre, WA (1999). F.H.N.F, Lawrence Wilson Gallery (1997) Honey has also participated in a number of group shows including Yellow Vest Syndrome, Fremantle Arts Centre (2009); Linden 1968, Linden Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2008); The Bon Scott Project, Fremantle Arts Centre (2008); Mix Tape, Art Gallery of Western Australia (2003);
Place where three dreams cross Plimsoll Gallery, University of Tasmania (2005).
"Bevan is an artist who explores and reveals the infinite paradoxes that inform our immediate environment and how we read and understand it. His images bring together the real and the contrived often surfing on an undercurrent of irony and humour to comment on our reading of contemporary Australian society"
Penny Bovell. Founding member MHF
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Rob Forlani
Image source Rob Forlani
Rob Forlani lives and works in Perth, Western Australia, where he was born and has developed a following across Australia, and his paintings are exhibited and collected throughout Australia, Europe, and the USA.
Known for his bold application of color and texture, Forlani’s canvasses are filled with shapes that at first seem familiar but suggest a parallel world reachable only through the imagination. In a lustrous palette and a musical style of tempered expressionism, Forlani paints abstract images inspired by the colors and forms from the world around us and by the thoughts and theories, emotions, and daydreams from within.
The post-impressionist and ‘fauve’ movements helped influence his first foray into painting. Then the sudden discovery of art produced by people like ‘Franz Kline,’ ‘Hans Hofmann, ‘Jackson Pollock’, and ‘Helen Frankenthaler’ came alive for him along with the personal expression, freedom and rebelliousness associated with Abstract Expressionism.
Closely examine Forlani’s work and elements from the four Artists mentioned above can be seen as his inspiration, driving force and influence.
“I love powerful abstract images with subtle nuances. Chaos and calm, tension and release.”
“I want everyone to have an individual feeling when viewing my work. The titles are just guides as ‘blurring the edges of meaning’ is the reason I produce abstract paintings.”
Turid Calgaret
Image source Community Arts Network
Turid Calgaret is a Whadjuk Noongar yorga who grew up in Fremantle. She is a practising artist who lives in Hilton with her three children.
Turid Calgaret uses art as therapy and as a reconnection to her family, ancestors, country and culture. Her mother is Nyungar and was part of the Stolen Generation. Turid is also connected to the Kimberley through her grandfather, a Mirrawong-Gadgerong man.
Visit: Instagram, Facebook, CommunityArtsNetwork
Donna Williams (Tjorlian)
Image source Baranga Maditjil
Donna Williams, also known as Tjorlian, is one of the talented Noongar artists in the Great Southern region. She mainly works in landscape design. She went to Albany High School and is currently residing in Albany
Visit: Tjorlian, Facebook, AlbanyAdvertiser
Sam bloor
Image source Jacob Steenson
Born 1987, Boorloo, Whadjuk Boodja | Perth, Western Australia
Lives and works Walyalup | Fremantle, Western Australia
Sam Bloor is a visual artist from Perth, Western Australia. Bloor’s background as a traditional signwriter informs his use of text provocations and large-scale public artworks. Blurring the line between his trade and artistic careers Bloor intends to play with existing perceived notions of value and labour.
Bloor has exhibited in a number of group and solo shows both nationally and internationally including, Totem In Tribute (2016) in Edinburgh, UK, the Fremantle Print Award (2016/18), Rotterdam Photo festival (2019), NL, and was commissioned to produce a major public work as part of the 2022 Perth festival program. Bloor has won multiple awards and is represented in both private and public collections including the Art Gallery of Western Australia.
Visit: sambloor, instagram, lintonandkay, kolbuszspace
Okuda San Miguel
Image source WA Today
Okuda’s distinctive style of geometric harmonies emboldened with intense colours can make his artworks feel like they’re from a parallel universe.
In his work, rainbow geometric architectures blend with organic shapes, bodies without identity, headless animals and symbols that encourage reflection in artistic pieces that could be categorized as Pop Surrealism with a clear essence of street forms. His works often raise questions about existentialism, the universe, the infinite, the meaning of life, and the contradictions of society’s false freedom, showing a conflict between modernity and our roots; ultimately, between man and the same.
Visit: OkudaSanMiguel, Instagram, Youtube
Kaiman
Image source Margaret River Art Trails
Kaiman – Kai O’Reilly – is a Margaret River based artist and designer working across a broad range of artistic avenues, including product logos, t-shirt graphics, imaginative illustrations and peacefully awe-inspiring paintings.
Kaiman’s art reflects the natural world, embracing the fact that nothing is perfect. Inspired by what’s directly in front of him or from a multitude of locations including his subconscious, Kaiman produces artwork that is simply pleasing.
Visit: Kaiman, Instagram
Nigel Lullfitz
Image source Margaret River Art Trails
Nigel Lullfitz’s sculptures are influenced by his work in the steel fabrication industry.
Working mainly with recycled materials, such as timber and steel, Nigel’s sculptures have character, movement, humour and beauty.
Nigel collects interesting bits of wood and machinery and incorporates them into art that is representative of the world around us while letting the materials tell their own story.
He has participated in Margaret River Region Open Studios for many years.
Visit: NigelLullfitz, Instagram
Paula Cristoffanini
Image source Margaret River Art Trails
Paula Cristoffanini had her first training in the visual arts as a young university student and she took up art studies again in 2005 upon her retirement from the workforce.
Paula’s mixed Chilean and Italian heritage have influenced her work, as have her experiences as an immigrant and a woman in changing times.
Paula has been exhibiting consistently since her graduation in 2007 and her work is represented in a number of private collections. Her work references the local environment and everyday objects.
Visit: PaulaCristoffanini
Kerry Brooks (Running wolves)
Image source Running Wolves
Strong and independent women are the epitome of Kerry’s lineage.
Her grandma was the matriarch of the household, as were her sisters and their mother, and as are her daughters. Kerry’s own mother carved out her inherently unique existence against the grain of society, exploring abroad at a young age, carving out a career in the tech industry.
These generations of women instilled in Kerry a fierce will and ambition to make her life her own. She searches for peace against conformity in a perpetual battle within a society that burdens the modern feminine soul with its far reaching expectations.
Kerry sees beauty in the unfamiliar, the strange. She is drawn to those who so confidently own their lives. Her work focuses on capturing the feminine beauty and power in every individual, often suggested by a lone figure, or expressive in abstract forms and sensual textures.
Contrary to her background of formulated processes in interior architecture, Kerry’s creative expression through painting is a place where she feels closest to the beauty and rhythm of her own being. It is where she is at peace to inspire, and to be inspired.
Whilst completing works individually, Leah and Kerry discovered a unique ability to paint on the same canvas and combine their very distinct styles. This rare and exciting collaboration was the catalyst for their collective body of work under the name, Running Wolves.
Visit: RunningWolves
Leah Pisconeri (Running Wolves)
Image source Running Wolves
Leah’s childhood memories stem from days spent exploring the wild; creating, painting, foraging and making on her family’s bush property in Western Australia. This is where her innate curiosity towards the patterns and functions of the natural world begun.
Creativity has taken precedence in Leah’s life decisions and ultimately her search for self-expression. Making space in her interior design business to deepen her painting practice and broaden her creative channels, was the catalyst in the conception of Running Wolves with Kerry Brooks.
With an approach that demands time and patience, Leah finds a deep sense of joy in slow, detailed processes. Her style embraces intricate pattern, delicate linework and expressive colour exploration. With a strong focus on the feminine and a woman’s inherent connection to nature, Leah’s sensitivity draws on the subtleties and rhythms of our natural world, relishing in aspects of the mystical and unseen.
Leah works from her home studio in Dunsborough, finding plenty of inspiration in Australia’s raw and beautiful South West region.
Visit: LeahPisconeri(RunningWolves)
Running Wolves (Kerry Brooks, Leah Pizconeri)
Image source Margaret River Art Trails
Leah Pisconeri and Kerry Brooks are creatives living and working in the Margaret River region.
Whilst creating art individually, they discovered a unique desire to paint on the same canvas and combine two very different styles. This collaboration was the catalyst for a collective body of work under the name, Running Wolves.
The artists celebrate and explore their feminine connection to the local wild nature in which they live in, drawing inspiration from the Margaret River Region and the diverse natural world of Western Australia.
Visit: RunningWolves, MargaretRiverArtTrails, Instagram, Facebook
Lightbox Laneway Gallery Collective
Image source City of Vincent
The Lightbox Laneway Gallery is located in Kaadadjiny Lane across from the Queens Tavern.
It provides an opportunity for up-and-coming artists to exhibit their talent in framed light boxes that are spread along a mural.
The gallery is an accessible public space for local creatives to showcase their illustrations, paintings, photography and/or graphic designs.
The aim of this project is to bring art and culture outside of the traditional gallery setting and offer great exposure for emerging artists.
There are four exhibition slots per year, for approximately three months each.
Visit: LightboxLaneway
