We cannot live without colour.

Colour is energy, a life force, nature shows us this continually day and night in the sunrise and sunset.

Colour can make our heart beat faster or touch the soul.

We all have a favourite.

Building up transparent layers of luminous oil colour and organic abstract shapes, creating a visual story is the essence of Marie Schlederer’s artworks.

While marks are lucid, fluid and organic, their purpose is to make art works that are limitless and forever giving pleasure, captivating many of our senses, not just our eyes.

“The process and creation of art for me is an emotional, spiritual, physical and chemical reaction to my vibrational being” – Marie Schlederer

M A R I L O U P A L A Z O N

Marilou Palazon is a contemporary Australian artist who has been painting large-scale botanicals, Australian Birds, and water themes for over 20 years. She treats them more like dramatic landscapes — exploring textures, ranges, light play and folds.

Choosing to eliminate a “feminine” reference, Palazon instead emphasises the theatrical and sculptural play of form in a contemporary and monumental scale. Adopting a realistic style, Palazon employs expressive and loose brushwork and unfinished areas that allow the viewer to fall into the work and to travel across the surface. Yet, within her love of realism, there is no desire for hyper-realism — not needing to explain every detail instead, keeping the surface texture full of painterly brush and glaze work. Ragged markings are used to lift the energy of the piece, rather than the stillness and precision of a still life.

Palazon acknowledges layered emotional and historical content for water and bathers, a long recognised passion in art, from Renaissance to Impressionist masters or classical platforms. Exploring universal themes of beauty, time, fragility, life, death, decay and birth. “Presently, the world is an unforgiving place, a society on edge. My need for simple pleasures and to refocus on a subject as simple as swimmers, of figures in water- the water being just what it is- cleansing and refreshing. Alternatively to me its mass and seductive darker depths have always been representative of the unconscious- the greater unknown.”

Marilou is a graduate of COFA, UNSW, Sydney and holds a degree and Graduate diploma in Visual Arts. She lives on the North Shore , Sydney with her family.

BEN LUCAS

“Eventually man, too, found his way back to the sea. Standing on its shores, he must have looked out upon it with wonder and curiosity, compounded with an unconscious recognition of his lineage.” - Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us

Ben’s paintings are concerned with portraying the emotions generated by the beauty and wonder of the natural world. They are painted from memory and are Informed by time spent in and on the water observing the changing moods and the play of light over and into the ocean’s surface near his Noosa home.

Ben is always looking for a sense of immediacy, openness and freedom in the work and tries to avoid overworking the paintings. In his view the paintings are a success when they hold a dramatic energy and sense of sweeping movement and the passage of time, while at the same time carrying a peaceful quiet presence. It’s thebalance between these two contrasts that are so fascinating.

Website: https://benlucas.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benlucaspaintings

KIRSTY GAUTHERON’S landscapes tap into a collective Australian psyche that yearns for the freedom of wide-open spaces. Viewers often feel they “know” the location of her subject matter. Kirsty’s works are contemplative and range from tranquil to dramatic in nature.

Kirsty is drawn to vast, isolated landscapes where her senses may be fully immersed in the moment. This may be listening to the wind rustling through grasses and trees, feeling the warmth of an evening, admiring long shadows cast or tasting salty ocean sea spray from a spectacular swell.

Paintings typically start with an underpainting of bright oranges and earthy colours or magentas and pinks, depending on the subject matter and the feeling Kirsty wishes to evoke. The work is then created, using layers of paint and mediums applied with brushes, palette knives and hand-made utensils to build subtlety, texture, and interest.

A long-held connection to the land and a profound love for all aspects of nature underpin Kirsty’s work.

The message I am sending the viewer of my art is one of happiness, a love of life and a love of the beautiful colours we are surrounded by and positive energy. I get a lot of feedback from people that my paintings evoke happiness and they are uplifting.

My work has been heavily influenced by the beautiful rural surroundings where I lived, connection to the land and positive energy. I have moved near the ocean so it will be interesting to see how the beach inspires my work.

For me, my work is a journey, ever evolving with continuous growth. I am blessed to share my stories and to evoke emotion through each and every piece.
My hope is that my work will trigger a memory or a personal experience for the viewer.

Joan Blond

Website: www.joanblondart.com

Instagram: Joan Blond

Email: joan@joanblondart.com

Montgomery is a Tasmanian born artist and printmaker working in Sydney. She is Sydney Road Gallery’s curator, with a keen eye for detail and a passion for working with creatives to extend their professional art practice. Sarah also owns ArtSmart, a local Artstore and framing business in Seaforth. She advises artists and customers on creating, framing and hanging fine-art.

As a printmaker, Etching is at the heart of her multimedia art practice, where she hopes to generate interest in the environment and natural world. She is drawn to the slow process of mark making, creating etched layers and tones in copper. The imagery builds with many small elements, sketched seed pods with curled edges and delicate lines, overlays of embossed shapes. Burred, black, brittle stems, contrast with white spaces and circle motifs. These signature marks describe places and allow personal interpretation.

There is a story, it is your own . . .

Journal entry:
“The ink glides smoothly across the plate, the contours and hollows softened with mustard hues, and steely greys. The drawings overlap and many lines give shape to a detailed printing plate, a new story begins, measured by moments of observation.”

Sarah Montgomery
BFA

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Sarah on Instagram

www.sarahmontgomery.com.au

CASSANDRA NG

Born in Sydney, Cassandra completed a Master of Art (Painting Major) in 2010 at the College of Fine Arts (COFA) UNSW.

Cassandra has been in a number of group shows, open studios and exhibited in local art prizes. One of her highlights was being included in the Director’s Cut Exhibition of the Blake Prize 2010. Cassandra also works as a medical doctor.

Cassandra is a contemporary Sydney based artist. Her current body of work explores the idea of Synaesthesia, which is a perceptual phenomenon where the stimulation of one sensory pathway causes the stimulation of a different bodily sense. In this case, when hearing music creates visions of colour. Being inspired by geometric abstraction, Cassandra creates paintings in morse code that tap out the lyrics to songs and combines them with thoughtfully mixed palettes to make works that have meaning and movement.

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Instagram

Cassandra Ng

Emerging landscape artist Amanda Mahony invites viewers to journey with her through Kur-rin-gai, the Northern Beaches and the Blue Mountains. Inspired by her swims and bushwalks, her abstract paintings blend the physical and emotional. Through a layered, process-driven approach, she transforms the canvas into a personal reflection of her experiences.

With a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the National Art School, Amanda’s strong academic foundation in art history enriches her artistic practice. Additionally, her Bachelor of Arts in Media from Macquarie University provides her with an eye for visual communication and storytelling.

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Amanda on Instagram

www.amandamahonyart.com.au

ALISON WERBELOFF
Alison is a Sydney based fine artist who graduated from East Sydney Technical College in Dress Design and Graphic Design. She began working as a textile designer in a very creative rag trade studio (14 years) but eventually abandoned this career to devote herself to painting. Having won a Scholarship at Julian Ashton Art School in The Rocks, her first exhibit came in 2007 at The Mechanics School of Arts in Pitt St with following exhibitions, including Artists & Craftsmen of Pittwater Art Shows and a 2024 1st Prize win in the Rotary Art Show (Northern Beaches). She has also been a finalist and placed in recent Sydney based Prizes. 

Ali is a representational oil painter using traditional techniques and methods, slowly bringing her subjects to life with layers of paint and glazes. Her recent subjects have been Northern Beaches landscapes and figures. She paints realistic nostalgic scenes of beach holidays and old postcard-like memories by weaving a tapestry in oil paint of escapism set on a backdrop of Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Her love affair with the beach and ocean is a constant inspiration  and flows throughout her paintings.

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Ali on Instagram

DAVID K WIGGS

David is a Sydney based artist with a studio in North Head. David has grown up around Sydney’s harbour and beaches. Surfing and exploring the natural beauty and wealth of his home and surrounding coast and country.
Most of his painting and drawing are created in the landscape or Plein air. “It seems like a natural progression as an artist to paint and produce work in the landscape given that that is where I have always spent my time”.
Painting on-site on the beaches, the harbour, the bush and out in the country is a response to the subject before him. In the moment, the movement of the water, the energy and theatre of the beach, the bridge, the harbour, the silence and power of the land and bush.
“When you connect with the subject and bypass thought, painting is a special thing. It gets you closer”. DW

Oil painting is slow drying, the colours are saturated, rich with a natural gloss. These beautiful, thick impasto paintings are full of energy and are painted Plein-air.

insta: https://www.instagram.com/davidwiggsart/

Leigh Vardanega’s artworks are quirky and playful. She draws inspiration from the coastal and bush environment surrounding her home along with her love of travel, family and celebration.

Her artworks oscillate between semi and pure abstraction - with colour always at the forefront of her process. She is drawn to texture and pattern and the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi where one finds beauty in things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete.

Leigh's artistic process is intuitive and her artworks evolve organically. She works in many layers of paint and glaze, often scratching and sanding back the surface to recreate the patina of an aged weathered surface. Leigh prepares her surfaces with blocks of colour and pencil markings then layering and subtracting colour, finishing with glazes and oil stick.

Above all, Leigh's art is driven by a desire to evoke joy and inspire an appreciation of adventure, travel and the everyday.

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Leigh on Instagram

https://www.leighvardanega.com.au