Members Interview

Katharine Dufault creates atmospheric landscape paintings that weave together observation, memory, and imagination to create places that feel emotionally familiar rather than geographically exact. Raised in the countryside near Cambridge, England, she developed a lifelong relationship with nature through countless afternoons spent painting outdoors with her artist mother, experiences that continue to shape her creative practice today. Working primarily in oil while also exploring watercolour, encaustic, monotype, and printmaking, Katharine begins with real landscapes before allowing intuition and memory to transform them into something entirely new. Trees, forests, rivers, rolling meadows,…

Lenny Pelling creates highly detailed pencil drawings that blend wildlife observation with storytelling, transforming Australian animals into memorable characters filled with personality, humour, and emotional depth. After leaving a corporate career in 2016 to pursue art full-time, she developed a distinctive practice that combines meticulous draftsmanship with a deep love for Australia’s unique wildlife. Rather than portraying animals as static subjects, Lenny imagines them living rich, relatable lives, whether it’s skinks sharing conversations, birds navigating daily adventures, or wombats going about their routines. Her work balances playful visual narratives with a…

Michelle Dumas transforms forgotten thrift-store paintings into dazzling contemporary artworks using thousands of individually applied sequins, breathing new life into vintage florals, landscapes, portraits, and found treasures. Rooted in a love of thrifting, upcycling, and creative reinvention, her practice challenges traditional ideas about value, beauty, and permanence by rescuing discarded artworks and turning them into vibrant, light-filled pieces that constantly shift with their surroundings. Working through an intensely time-consuming process, Michelle carefully builds layers of colour, texture, shimmer, and pattern that invite viewers to slow down and experience the work from…

Natalie Jane Parker creates highly detailed wildlife paintings that celebrate the beauty, personality, and diversity of Australia’s native animals and birds. Inspired by a childhood spent exploring bushland filled with possums, reptiles, birds, and towering eucalyptus trees, her work reflects a lifelong connection to nature and a deep appreciation for the natural world. Working primarily in acrylic on clay-coated board, Natalie carefully captures every feather, fur texture, water droplet, spider web, and habitat detail with extraordinary precision while maintaining a strong sense of warmth and life within each composition. Her paintings…

Nayeli Lavanderos creates intricate black-ink animal portraits that exist at the intersection of wildlife art, symbolism, healing, and personal transformation. Born in Mexico and now based in Portugal, her practice is deeply influenced by animal advocacy, shamanic traditions, and the Mexican concept of the nahual—the animal companion or spiritual mirror that accompanies a person through life. Each drawing begins with careful observation but unfolds through intuition, patience, and thousands of meticulously placed marks that slowly bring the animal’s presence to life. Working exclusively in black ink for much of her career,…

Robyn Palescandolo creates floral paintings that balance painterly realism with expressive brushwork, transforming flowers, fruit, and natural forms into deeply emotional experiences of beauty, wonder, and connection. Drawing inspiration from years spent studying art history, working as a designer, running a painting retreat in rural Italy, and continually returning to art throughout life's many changes, her work reflects both technical mastery and personal growth. Rich with soft pinks, lavenders, blues, greens, and luminous whites, her palette emerges from close observation of nature while gently heightening colour to capture emotion rather than…

Karen Gemming creates atmospheric watercolour landscapes that balance observation, memory, and intuition, transforming coastlines, rivers, mountains, and open wilderness into deeply calming emotional experiences. Having lived between New Zealand and Australia, her work reflects the influence of both places, from New Zealand’s rugged coastlines and lush green landscapes to the distinctive colours, heat, and light of Queensland. Alongside her representational paintings, Karen’s Dreamscape series allows water, pigment, and instinct to guide the process, creating works that feel both familiar and imagined. Working with carefully limited colour palettes, she builds paintings that…

Tine Rosa Ebdrup creates vibrant textile sculptures that merge coral-like forms, feminine symbolism, recycled materials, and intuitive making into deeply personal works about identity, fertility, vulnerability, and women’s power. Trained in fashion and textile design at Design School Kolding in Denmark, she returned to knitting during the pandemic and unexpectedly discovered an entirely new artistic language rooted in softness, bodily experience, and feminist reflection. Using recycled bedsheets, women’s clothing, tablecloths, yarn, and glitter thread, she transforms everyday domestic materials into organic sculptural forms inspired by female anatomy, sea anemones, corals, egg…

Sepideh Shahgholi creates deeply personal paintings and wearable sculptures shaped by memory, identity, migration, and emotional connection to place. Moving fluidly between abstract landscapes, layered mark-making, organic forms, and intricate sculptural headpieces made from wire and natural materials, her work explores how emotions and memories live within the body long after places are left behind. Rather than beginning with fixed images, her paintings emerge intuitively through feelings, smells, colours, and fragments of lived experience that slowly surface onto the canvas through layered marks and washes. Alongside her paintings, Sepideh’s wearable sculptures…

Victoria Curling Eriksson creates atmospheric oil paintings that move between seascape, landscape, and emotional memory, transforming coastlines, skies, forests, and shifting light into deeply calming visual experiences. Living on the northwest coast of Skåne in Sweden, surrounded by sea and woodland nature reserves, she paints entirely from intuition rather than photographs or sketches, allowing colour, atmosphere, and feeling to guide each work as it slowly develops through layered oils. Her paintings often begin with only an emotion or palette in mind, gradually evolving over many thin layers into compositions filled with…