Our Artists

Browse our artists

Dianna Heeps

Dianna is a mixed media artist and up cycler who resides in the western district of Victoria. 

Born in Melbourne to Dutch immigrants, she often felt ‘different’ because of her cosmopolitan background growing up in the fringes of the city, where dirt roads, billycarts and paddocks met highways, rail and traffic. This fed her imagination; always creating in her individual world.

Her desire to create is intrinsic to who she is. Her career, teaching in primary and special education, always had ‘arty’ leanings. Throughout the years, she has studied and workshopped a variety of art practices.

Dianna’s style has evolved from semi abstract to abstract. Acrylic paint is layered intuitively and spontaneously onto canvas, board or paper into compositions which reflect her experiences and surroundings. Broad areas of colour are manipulated into shapes together with random liner brush strokes; a visual harmony of movement, shape and colour. Dianna continues to experiment and explore the possibilities in her art.   

Trevor Holder

Born in Jamestown, South Australia, Trevor was educated in both South Australia and Victoria. Completing teaching studies in Ballarat, he was fortunate to study painting. The head of the Arts Department was Gareth Samson (an Australian abstract expressionist). Under Samson’s tutorship, Trevor had several successful exhibitions in BaIIarat. Trevor’s work in this era was figurative and often involved the use of Hessian and rice paper to add feel and texture to the canvas. 

Trevor was invited to continue an art career at Swinburne Institute; however, he passed this opportunity and followed a teaching career, ceasing painting for some thirty years and not recommencing until 2004. Since then, he has varied his subjects from figurative paintings to landscapes and cityscapes as application and process continue to change. The dominant aspect of his art is to create a sculpture on canvas and to tell a story. 

In recent years Trevor completed a series of shipwrecks and lighthouse paintings from images around the world. Other works depict his interest in Ned Kelly, trips to Kakadu and cities throughout Europe and the Middle East. Paris and Venice visits resulted in works reflecting his love and intrigue of these cityscapes. Being local to the district, Trevor spent many years fishing and exploring Warrnambool’s historic Shipwreck Coast.  The process of painting and over painting and dragging colour over rough surfaces intrigues him and he encourages observers to touch as well as see his art. He enjoys the journey of painting and telling a Story. His artistic influences include Keifer, Bacon, Sansom, Monet, Klimpt, Nolan and Jackson Pollock. 

Julie Reason

Julie is primarily a watercolour artist, with her other love being oils, a love of nature and an attention to detail is prominent in all of her paintings, looking so closely at living things you are suddenly aware of how complex, breathtaking and precious nature is.

Julie says that living at the foot of the Grampians in beautiful Western Victoria is an inspiration with such a wide variety of wildlife, birds and botanical subjects and dramatic landscape to paint. Botanical art is a large part of her artistic life, but not exclusively.

Julie has won many awards and has accepted various commissions. Most of her works are in private collections around Australia and overseas.

Amabile Dalfarra-Smith

After making lino cuts for many years, Amabile gradually started to work on her painting skills. This move has been exceptionally rewarding in both developing her as an artist and in keeping her totally absorbed in trialing a range of ideas, techniques and mediums.

Her work is held in many private and public collections nationally and internationally. She has won many awards in her many years of practice. 

Amabile was born in Mildura and moved to Horsham after studying art and design in Melbourne. Since retiring from being a teacher she has been totally committed to her passion of creating art.

Diana Wiseman

Born in Narracoorte, South Australia, Diana has lived in the South East of South Australia since 1971. Diana believes that exploration is everything. She has an idea and then works intuitively creating new ways to capture patterns, forms, textures, space and light in the natural and rural landscape. This is what inspires her to paint and print.

Diana completed the Art Certificate Course at TAFE in 1982 and subsequently taught painting at TAFE. She exhibited in group exhibitions yearly since 1982 in Adelaide, Canberra, country Victorian and South Australian Galleries and has had exhibited in solo exhibitions in McLaren Vale and Adelaide. Her works are seen in the collections of the Riddoch Art Gallery in Mount Gambier and Country Arts SA as well as numerous private collections in Australia and overseas. 

While continuing to study art at workshops, Diana has undertaken courses at the National Art School in Sydney and the Australian Print Workshop in Melbourne. Her highly commended awards are numerous and her wins include the Naracoorte Open Award, the Local Artist Award at the Southern Ocean Art Awards in 2014, the Local Artist Award at the John Shaw Neilson Award in 2015.   Diana is currently the President of the Thumbprint Workshop Inc and is a member of the Gallery 54 Art Collective at Penola in South Australia. 

Vida Pearson

Vida has been a professional artist/printmaker for over 30 years. Early in her career her favoured mediums were screen printing and etching. However, in the last 15 years she has concentrated almost exclusively on linocuts. She has a very distinctive style with her brightly coloured strongly designed works - mostly hand coloured.

Upon joining the Wildlife Art Society of Australasia many years ago her images naturally took a turn in that direction. This enables her to combine a love of bird-watching, photography and travel with her work. She spends approx. 2 months each year on various field trips within Australia and overseas collecting material for new images. This has involved many trips to outback Australia and inspirational places such as Antarctica, Madagascar, Asia, Iceland and most recently Africa. She finds observing all types of wildlife exhilarating - even those she observes daily on her 5-acre bush block. She hopes that by creating beautiful images of the natural world she may cause people to reflect on how amazing our planet is. 

Her work can be found in galleries throughout Australia. She has won over 150 prizes in art competitions and exhibits regularly in group and solo shows. She was voted "Wildlife Artist of the Year" by the Wildlife Art Society of Australasia in both 2014 and 2015 and is featured in "Inspiration Wild: An Artistic Celebration of Nature and Environment" published by the Wildlife Art Museum of Australia Foundation. Her work is featured in the 2017 Australia Geographic Art Calendar

Dee Mattheson

Dee Matheson’s love of art began at a very early age and continued on at Deakin University, while pursuing an art major along with her teaching qualifications. She lived in rural Bambra for many years and has recently relocated to the nearby coast. She taught at Birregurra Primary School where she took the opportunity to promote art within the local community through the design and construction of murals, bollards and large art works in the school. She is a proud member of the local art group “Riverlee” helping to keep art a priority in the local area.

Dee’s paintings often reflect the local landscape, flora and fauna as well as her passion for travel. Her main love is watercolour but in recent years she has expanded into oils, enjoying the freedom it gives. She has displayed her work at solo exhibitions at the Forrest Brewery and at art shows in the Surf Coast and local Art Space in exhibitions throughout the year. A number of her artworks have been purchased and are on display at the Winchelsea Rural Hospital and the Torquay Lions Village. Her work has also been exhibited at Eagle’s Nest Gallery in Aireys Inlet. Dee’s paintings often reflect the local landscape, flora and fauna as well as her passion for travel. Her main love is watercolour but in recent years she has expanded into oils, enjoying the freedom it gives. She has displayed her work at solo exhibitions at the Forrest Brewery and at art shows in the Surf Coast and local Art Space in exhibitions throughout the year. A number of her artworks have been purchased and are on display at the Winchelsea Rural Hospital and the Torquay Lions Village. Her work has also been exhibited at Eagle’s Nest Gallery in Aireys Inlet.

Dee’s artworks have been selected to be a part of the Surf Coast Calendar on a number of occasions. She has won a number of watercolour awards in the Winchelsea, Anglesea and Birregurra art shows.

Richard Weatherly

Richard Weatherly is an iconic Australian artist, conservationist and innovative farmer. He uses art as a platform to contribute to the conservation and restoration of the environment, global sustainability and land care.  His life work has been acknowledged with prestigious awards and achievements including an Order of Australia Medal (OAM).

Richard is well known for being a conservationist and innovative farmer. His love of birds and the natural world was fostered during a rural childhood. His parents and grandparents had kept lists of the bird species on the family property, but it was under Richard’s stewardship that the numbers of species almost doubled. He and his wife Jenny established over twenty wetlands and revegetated the denuded habitat with trees and a rich selection of understorey plants.

While studying history at Cambridge, Richard had carved two sculptures from a broken walnut gunstock. These were spotted by a London gallery, exhibited and sold. Richard followed this up with two solo exhibitions of his paintings, having taken the opportunity to study with some renowned British artists. The die was cast: to the dismay of his parents, he decided to become an artist.

Richard’s latest work includes the release of his new book, ‘A Brush With Birds’. More than just a bird book, or an art book, ‘A Brush With Birds’ takes you on an adventure to faraway places and gives an insight into the rich history and life experiences of it’s author.

Britt Gow

Britt lives on a sheep and cattle property with her husband in the south west of Victoria. They have two children who have grown up and moved on, giving Britt time to indulge her creative desires. As a science and maths teacher since 2002, Britt has a keen interest in the intersection between Art, Science and Maths.

Britt's work is often inspired by the great diversity of living organisms and the ecological relationships between species. She also likes to explore unusual perspectives, such as aerial views, microscopic images and changes over millennia.

James McMurtrie

James has always enjoyed using his hands to make things and to find out how things worked. This is a normal part of life growing up on a farm, where the practical application of knowledge is of fundamental importance. But having a creative mother with a passion for textiles meant that art also played a large part in his childhood experiences. 

An awareness of colour, design and form as they are reflected in the natural landscape, combined with a strong practical bent meant it was only a matter of time before James found an outlet for his creative expression in the medium of clay.

Under the guidance of ceramicist John Eagle, James explored the possibilities and enjoyed the process of making something beautiful out of a raw medium – clay. He finds the firing process fascinating, and opening a kiln to look at the results of days work is an exciting moment that continues to thrill him. 

"Working with tools, similar to that dating back to the first century B.C. fills me with a sense of history and tradition of the old techniques. Glass blowing proves to be an exciting medium with which I can experiment and express my ideas with immediate results on a daily basis." - James McMurtrie

Veronica McDonald

Veronica is a traditional artist painting in all mediums. Watercolour on Yupo "paper" has become her favourite with tree portraits her greatest interest .

Leonie Tyson

Leonie has over 30 years of experience creating hand crafted pottery, specialising in vibrant glazes and sgraffito decoration.

Philip Adams

Contemporary Australian landscape and wildlife paintings.

"​“What I want to capture is the excitement of exploring a new landscape. Everything is to be discovered, the senses are sharpened, and each vista is full of untold mysteries and beauties from the minute mosses, fungi, wildflowers, and insects to panoramic views of forests, cliffs and mountains. My practice of meditation renews my vision. Coming from that point of inner calm it is easy to appreciate the exquisite beauty of the natural environment. I want to share this through painting. In my larger works I use vertical divisions as this format allows me the freedom to combine imagery I am drawn too.”

Judy Rauert

Ceramic artist

Grant Thomas

Miniatures.