Pastel Paintings In Realism

As a young girl growing up in rural Victoria, Australia, I loved to draw. I discovered oil paints whilst still at school and that was when I fell in love with the Australian bush. As a child I would often take off on my own, walking for miles through the hillsides that surrounded our house, admiring the trees and various shades of grasslands in the ever changing seasons.

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I had a long break of more than 30 years from any art and dedicated my time to work and my children. After retiring in 2018  due to a lengthy illness I wondered what I would do with myself to fill the void. This was when I discovered pastels, remembering a day years earlier when viewing a very large pastel painting in Beechworth near to where I live now and how I was drawn to the vibrancy and smooth texture but which looked just like an oil painting.

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After testing out cheap pastels and paper which did not do what I wanted I ventured into Pan Pastels and I immediately fell in love with the multitude of colour variaions, I adapted to working with brushes (mainly make-up brushes), no messy fingers and very little dust falling off the paper, working in a tradition much like oil paints. Pan Pastels have minimal binder and fillers, resulting in rich, ultra soft and super-blendable colours loaded with the finest quality artists' pigments which have excellent lightfastness and are fully erasable. I also use the very best quality soft pastels, pastel pencils and Pastelmat my pastel paper of choice.

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​In 2021 I won my first art award with the Pastel Society of Victoria Australia, the Margaret Lourey Award an exciting and unexpected win this early in my art journey.

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In recent years, I have dedicated more time to painting our unique flora and birdlife, striving to capture the spirit of the landscape and its creatures. Through my work, I hope to highlight the richness and diversity of Australia's natural world.

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