Artist Statements
Amy Falentine
I am a Melbourne-based artist, born in West Java, Indonesia, in 1987, and I migrated to Melbourne in 2005. My art is rooted in my heritage and my love for nature. My style is influenced by the beautiful things that shaped my senses while growing up. From Batik textile prints to Balinese dance, Gamelan music, and the works of Indonesia’s great artists. Everything is dynamic, diverse, and colourful.
I received early art training from local artists in my hometown, learning to work with oil pastels, soft pastels, and oil paints. During my studies at RMIT, I explored a broader range of media such as gouache, water-based markers, and watercolour, as well as other disciplines including textile printing, printmaking, graphic design, and photography.
Today, I use soft pastel as my primary medium. I work directly with my hands, blending colours to create depth and texture – an approach that fosters an intimate connection between myself and my artwork. Soft pastel is a beautifully expressive medium that aligns with my art and story, which emphasise emotion, connection to nature, and sensory experience. It does not yellow, crack, or fade like some paints – its colours remain vivid for generations.
Andrea Guasch Rosado
My practice explores abstraction and materiality as a means of reflecting on connection and collective experience. I approach each work as a dialogue between process and outcome, where intuition and chance guide the evolution of form. This sensitivity to material and making allows meaning to emerge gradually, revealing the quiet relationships between gesture, surface, and emotion.
Central to my work is an interest in how we navigate the world both as individuals and as part of a greater collective, how our experiences overlap, intersect, and inform one another. Through layers, subtle compositions, and organic processes, I aim to translate these dynamics into visual form, creating spaces that hold stillness and presence.
My intention is to evoke empathy and introspection through abstraction. By inviting viewers to slow down and engage with the subtleties of material and process, my work becomes a site for contemplation a moment of connection between self and other, where meaning unfolds through reflection.
Aukje van Vark
I love to make quirky animals with a twist, with a side serve of humour – for people who like something different.
My need to make leads to and comes from, the animal world. Animals give me freedom to show what I see and what is important.
When creating Art, my mission is not to depict life, but to reflect on it, and how I experience it- to achieve this I need to exaggerate what I see to translate the feeling, which is how my animals are bringing joy, despair, wonder, – emotion- into my sculptures.
They portray movement, as posture and flow are essential to convey my message.
Barb Uhlenbruch
In these three oil paintings, I explore the essence of summer through the changing light of the day — from the soft glow of sunrise over some vineyards, to the brilliance of the midday sun on a beach, and the quiet warmth of dusk settling in over a valley.
Bev Plowman
Taste of Summer is a paper mosaic. It is a feeling that the warm air is coming, and the sun flowers and roses are still blooming. The sun and sand are beckoning us to picnics and the beach. We can taste ice creams and barbeques.
Blanca Padros-Quintana
Blanca is a Spanish Australian artist based in Melbourne. Over the years she discovered a love for travel and recording her adventures and makes mini painted postcards. She uses photography and impressionist oil painting to achieve her intricate postcard paintings.
Christina Rankin
‘Sunbathing’ embodies the quiet intensity of summer, the warmth that trails across the skin, the intensity of heat, and the hazy transitions between moments of rest and renewal. Through the interplay of texture and translucency, this work seeks to evoke the sensory experience of being enveloped by sunlight. Layers of thick modelling paste form a tactile ground, suggesting the physicality of heat and the earth’s surface beneath it, while thin washes of lilac, burnt sienna, and peach interact to produce an optical resonance that lingers, much like the residual warmth of sunlight on the skin. The resulting gradient carries an aura-like quality, oscillating between calm and radiance. In this way, ‘Sunbathing’ reflects on the act of pausing, of surrendering to warmth, and allowing time to expand. It is a meditation on presence and renewal, capturing summer not as a season, but as a state of being.
Claire Cummack
Claire is a semi abstract artist from Melbourne artist. Her contemporary, fresh style is characterised by vibrant colours, intricate layers and rich textures. Her favourite subjects are landscapes and still life. As an intuitive painter, emotions are the inspiration and starting point for Claire’s art. Mark making, layers and colour are the tools she uses to explore these emotions and everyday experiences. Her works often grapple with the tension between simplicity and abundance, often with a sense of whimsy. Claire’s pieces express a deep sense of joy and presence, capturing the essence of life in the moment.
Using the energy of colour as the vehicle, and with a sense of whimsy or storytelling, I seek to engage, capture and distract for just a moment, a precious moment, so that the viewer can be taken on an inner journey, which I hope, ends in a smile and a lightness of heart.
My aim is always to uplift, to spark joy, a sense of fun and adventure, all the while keeping a childlike sense of humour and simplicity.
Dinusha Joseph
This painting is part of a series that explores the relationship between external structures and internal landscapes. The landscape it evokes is the halcyon days of late summer. I intended there to be an old world feel to the image beyond the circular foreground.
The entry point is derived from architectural imagery, which provides the gateway in a series of work, to the abstracted view beyond. The circle in the foreground to this piece came from a multi layered ceiling, which I saw in a photographic image. Other pieces in the series also combine differing structures in the foreground with abstraction beyond. The form appealed to me for its simplicity and irregularity. My exploration in this body of work relates to the link between structure and the organic, both in imagery and in life.
I use paint as a vehicle to build a visual journey, through layering and buildup of colour. A mixture of glazing and overlaying is integral to this process. The intention is to take the viewer on a journey to a place defined by its mood.
Emma Kelly
This painting depicts the unique nature birds in Australia, being that Ibis birds. Whether we go to the city or see Ibis in their natural habitat- the wetlands – these birds represent an important part of Australian culture. The are four Ibis in the painting with strong curved black beaks and grey-white feathers. The background of the painting features plants and leaves in various bright summertime colours of pinks, reds, blues, greens and yellows. The painting is child-like and playful, clearly representing an Australian summer with a very well-known Australian bird.
Geraldine Olle
As a designer with more than 40 years of experience shaping interior environments, I have always been drawn to the subtle balance between structure and atmosphere. More recently, my creative pursuits have expanded to painting.
My land and seascapes are largely painted using greys, blues and greens, inspired by the shifting boundaries I observe in nature—moments when mist and fog soften the edges between land, sea, and sky. These quiet transitions create an ethereal quality where water, land and air appear to merge, especially in the gentle light of dawn and dusk.
Through deep tonal layers, I aim to evoke a sense of stillness and calm, inviting the viewer to pause and drift into these dreamlike but emotive spaces. My background in designing interiors has taught me the power of atmosphere—how light, colour, and material can influence mood and memory. Through painting, I continue this exploration, seeking to capture fleeting and individual moments of serenity or reflection where the world feels both familiar and beautifully mysterious.
Grace Zoiti
With a love for fashion, I always draw inspiration from runways, magazines and design houses for my art. Fusing that with the feelings of Summer, combining bright colours, floral patterns and accessories; I have created artworks that reflect a warm, happy, fashionable Summer.
Helen Shields
This work explores the reiteration of reductive, elemental motifs using flat planes of colour and line to depict place and time; not in any conventional manner, but to apply the visual language of hard-edge abstraction based on organic and geometric forms. Its’ aim is to capture a response to the moment (specifically high Summer) and look towards a natural world beyond ordinary appearances.
Isabella Cerritelli
I source my inspiration from nature and fashion styles – particularly the hippie era – consisting of bright colours, vibrant patterns, and flowers. I combine these aspects with modern touches to create my artwork.
Janet Hayes
I have chosen to submit 3 different artworks for the summer exhibition.
Calla Lilies and Peaches, in Acrylic paint- a still life painted from life last summer which brings a summer feel to any room, any time of the year
In the Heat of the Day, a nude in Pastel also drawn from life. I love to work in pastel particularly for nudes and portraits. Pastel creates the soft, sensuous feel of skin
Freycinet, Summer, in Oil paint, a small landscape expressing the unique environment of this Eastern Tasmanian wilderness area with the few figures at the water’s edge enjoying the coolness of the water and the natural purity of this special place
Justine Siedle
In this series of series of watercolours, I explore the quiet joy and fleeting beauty found along the Yarra River in Boroondara during summer. These works are inspired by moments observed while walking by the river when the air is still warm and the light dances across the water.
The paintings capture rowers and kayakers in motion. Familiar figures whose rhythmic strokes create a kind of moving meditation. Through shifting colours and soft washes, I aim to reflect the changing moods of the river across time of day and season, inviting viewers to see these everyday scenes with fresh appreciation.
These paintings are a celebration of summer’s gentle energy and the peaceful connection between people and nature in our local landscape.
Karen Preston
Making art is like a joyous dance for me, it enables me to physically engage with and give visual presence to thoughts and feelings that are difficult–if not impossible–to articulate in words.
My passion for abstract expressionism developed when studying art as an undergraduate at Frankston Technical College and Caulfield Institute of Technology. Living in the hills of South Gippsland and attending the Gippsland School of Art fostered my appreciation for environmental art. While my artwork is inspired by these movements, I am always exploring different styles and approaches.
Water is a persistent theme in my work, I love its fluidity and ever-changing qualities, and also its association with the subconscious, and sense of endless possibility that watery spaces offer. I am interested in coastal or littoral zones, where water and land meet, and transition, contrast and endurance are ever present qualities of survival.
The theme of this exhibition: ‘Feels like summer’ couldn’t be more apt for my most recent series, which I refer to as ‘Dancing towards Summer’. The soft pastel colours of the sky and shoreline in late spring and early summer, contrast with ‘unbridled’ strokes and marks that dance and leap across the canvas surface, representing the feelings and emotions I associate with this joyful time of year.
Kathryn Zammit
Kathryn Zammit enjoys capturing everyday scenes and still life’s that she feels a connection with. She finds that people buy her art when they also have that connection, whether it be a memory of a person or place or of something familiar they relate to. A Melbourne artist who paints mainly in oils, Kathryn has a background in illustration and design and enjoys capturing detail whilst keeping her art fresh.
Kathy Best
“I see the world, and I paint it” Kathy Best
Kathy creates bold, expressive acrylic abstracts and contemporary paintings based on observation of the world around her. She sometimes paints loosely from reference photos or memory. Other times she lets the paint and marks on the canvas guide her. Kathy’s works explore colour relationships, movement, shapes and layers.
Kathy completed a Diploma of Visual Arts at RMIT in 2023.
“Take a look, take a 2nd look and take a longer look – I love putting my work out there.”
The Day Begins – Inspired by a photo taken from the balcony of a resort in Phuket Thailand, this one shows the resort all clean and tidy ready for the tourists to start their day.
The lawns, gardens and paths were always swept and manicured. A day in paradise with the most important decision being whether to sit by the pool or by the beach.
Masa Hoss
Summer is the maker of those moments that hold a timeless sweetness—idyllic fragments of life where everything feels suspended in light. This work captures such a moment: a child eating ice cream between the bathing boxes of Brighton, where innocence lingers and the world feels carefree.
Inspired by Australian Tonalism, it explores how light and atmosphere can express emotion beyond representation. Drawing from the tonalists’ quiet observation of the everyday, it extends their sensitivity to mood through contemporary digital photography. Using intuitive in-camera techniques and hand-finished processes, the work transforms fleeting sensations into enduring impressions.
Grounded in tonal restraint and softness, it favours subtlety over precision, evoking the contemplative hush of late afternoon. In carrying forward the iconic feel of carefree Australian summers, the image reflects on how light shapes remembrance—how the simplest moments become the most enduring.
Megan-Jane Johnstone
These abstract expressionist works are inspired by the characteristics of sun and surf commonly associated with summer and invite viewers to contemplate the interplay between these two natural phenomena. The radiance and warmth of the sun is expressed by the colour yellow, which is also positively associated metaphorically with happiness, optimism, intellect, creativity, and joy. The power and beauty of the ocean is expressed by the colours turquoise, blue and white. Although dependent on geophysical conditions such as sediment and particulates floating in the water refracting the light, the turquoise-blue colour of the sea is nonetheless associated with summer. This is because during summer there is an abundance of sunlight, the weather is warmer, and the climate is calmer. Turquoise-blue water also has a variety of rich metaphorical meanings. In different cultures and contexts, it may be taken to symbolises serenity, tranquillity, healing, hope, protection, and the connection between the sky and earth.
Mel McDonnell
My Practice:
My digital drawing practice enables me to immediately render my experience of the natural world, using my free hand to respond immediately in order to respect nature’s shapes and colours.
Technique:
Digital drawing with my finger. A fresh approach to create insitu and capture movement and colours instantaneously and organically. I observe and record momentary experiences and beauty in nature. This series captures a road trip in the Currumbin hinterland -colour, warmth and freedom of summertime.
Influence:
I am moved by the colour and inventiveness of David Hockney’s digital work. Using this medium, I’m able to freely adapt to the environment using my iPhone or iPad.
Message and meaning:
“Road Trip series” captured the dappled light peeking through the wild colourful rainforest, leaving temporary impressions on the road; the bright palette of the rainforest enhanced by the sun as I contemplated with a coffee in the valley; and the vibrancy of activity as people enjoyed paddling on the Currumbin river.
I aim to convey vibrancy of colour and shapes in a playful, free and optimistic way showing my appreciation of the happiness brought by these natural environments where there is interplay between nature and people.
Melanie Melnychuk
Inspired by a trip taken to Nice, France last year. These pieces capture the warm and relaxing feeling of laying at the beach, listening to the soft waves in the distance and feeling the warmth of the sun. I felt particularly inspired to depict the forms of the stones at the beach, focussing on how light reflects off them and how they all lay together to create the surface of the beach.
Nahian Nidhi
Summer is the season of new beginnings. The greenery around us becomes a gentle reminder of growth, renewal, and the courage to start again. While summer is often celebrated for its colours, to me it lives in the calm of green leaves and the quiet peace they carry. In nature, I find clarity, comfort, and the inspiration to keep moving forward. The swan at the heart of the piece reflects grace, calm, and transformation, an anchor within nature’s gentle renewal.
Nicole Gammie
Going to the beach always brings back the feeling of summer — warm days filled with laughter, the scent of salt in the air, and the rhythmic sound of waves meeting the shore. This handmade bobbin lace piece, embellished with embroidery, captures a cherished childhood memory of those carefree days. The intricate lacework reflects the gentle movement of the sea and the delicate patterns found in nature, while the embroidery adds texture and colour to evoke the joy of sandcastles rising along the tideline and beach umbrellas scattered in a vibrant rainbow across the sand. Seashells glisten where the water meets the shore, and the sunlight filters through drifting clouds, creating a scene that feels both nostalgic and timeless. This work celebrates the essence of summer — connection, play, and the beauty found in simple, fleeting moments.
Nina Killham
I was fortunate to marry a Western Australian, which has given me the gift of standing barefoot in unexpectedly cold water, gazing across the vast sweep of the turquoise Indian Ocean. This past summer I found myself captivated by the shoreline, watching humans and dogs leaping with joy at the beach’s edge, boats sailing regally past, evening settling on smooth water.
I want my photos to reflect both a love of the natural world and an awareness of its fragility. In this latest series, I’ve turned to the beach–one of the most iconic and beloved images of Australia–as a way of celebrating beauty and the vitality of summer.
Yet alongside this idyll lies the sky, vast and sometimes foreboding, reminding us what could be lost if we fail to care for the planet. The work is as much about light, colour and love as it is about responsibility and preservation. As much about beauty as about possible regret.
Randa Baini
My work explores the intimate dialogue between landscapes and portraits — between the world around us and the world within us. Each portrait I create reflects not only the individual before me but also the unseen terrains of their emotions, histories, and dreams. Likewise, every landscape becomes a kind of portrait: a face of the earth shaped by time, memory, and human presence.
Through light, texture, and composition, I seek to capture the quiet tension between solitude and connection — how the environment mirrors the self, and how we, in turn, shape our environments. My goal is to reveal the shared essence between people and places: the way both hold stories, scars, and beauty that transcends the surface.
Rebecca Leahy
Rebecca Leahy is a contemporary acrylic artist from the Macedon Ranges. Living in the country is an endless source of inspiration, with much of her work showcasing bold, textured florals and abstract landscapes. The use of bright and vibrant colour is a cornerstone of her artwork, delivering an almost oversaturated look to her work. Rebecca is a busy mum of two young girls and finds painting to be a wonderful creative outlet and her children a beautiful inspiration for her work.
Richard Horstman
During the past three decades I have explored my creativity through writing, painting, drawing, sculpture. During the 1990s, I exhibited both two- and three-dimensional works. My recent paintings, Universal Eye Mandalas—an investigation into geometry launched in 2023—draw from my long-standing fascination into sacred art and my geometric design experiments, which began in 2008. My work is the integration of art, science and spirituality.
The objective is to engage with the central eye, suspend thinking and allow the composition’s colours and forms to interact with the subconscious mind. The vibrant aesthetic qualities captivate, while the geometric designs bring the viewer into contemplative and peaceful state of mind. Art is a unique form of social, cultural capital. Its functional, practical values become increasingly significant to the healthy trajectory of modern society during this unprecedented era of chaos and change.
Rosalind Price
I’m a city-based person searching for connection with land and natural systems through painting and making. I respond to my surroundings with whatever is at hand: drawing, painting, printmaking, working with mixed-media, and creating 3D objects. I’m always intrigued by rivers, with their mysterious currents, fleeting colours, and ambiguities of surface and depth. The works in Feels Like Summer were inspired by a sun-drenched holiday beside rivers in France, using watercolours, inks, and earth pigments from Roussillon. Rosalind Price
Roz McQuillan
‘I developed a love of drawing as a child, when I first drew my ageing auntie in the bath. I have always been fascinated by people, their character and individuality, which has led to my passionate interest in portraits and figurative work. I have won a number of Awards and Highly Commendeds, and currently work in oils.
Ruth Bosveld
The Table Cape Tulip farm sits high above the coastline of northwest Tasmania. From the top of the farm, you look out, past the lighthouse, to Bass Strait. The title of my piece, “Heading for the Light”, literally reflects the act of looking down the gap between lines of tulips to the lighthouse, but also suggests a figurative meaning of looking for inspiration and a guiding principle, which I find in my faith in Christ.
My daughter, Eloise, took the reference photo for this painting and I completed it in oils.
Sally Darlison
Sally Darlison’s work explores place, the journey to and from, and the relationship that we have with place. Sally particularly enjoys exploring new places, observing both the natural and the built environment.
A multidisciplinary artist, she uses various media combining fabric, photos, maps, text and various printmaking techniques, to create artwork in several formats including artist books and framed works, using machine and hand stitch to draw, bind and link.
Sally aims to share some of her awe of the world with others, highlighting the beauty of the natural world. She is particularly aware of the impact we humans have made and hopes that greater awareness will lead to greater care.
Sara Valentino
My limited-edition lino prints are inspired by the connections I make. This is often the places I travel to but is also the culture that I have lived and the rituals that are now part of my life. What you see is the expression of my reaction to all of these: the colour that I may have noticed first, the linear qualities of the architecture, the simplicity of a ritual that is noticed again or the light and shadows that play across a view or scene. ‘Mykonos’ is a story of walking through the narrow, stone paved streets, with shadows falling across our path, created as the sun summer tries to push through the overhanging bougainvillea that will create the much needed from that same hot summer sun.
Sarah Robinson
I work across many mediums including water colour painting, illustration, memoir and creative fiction writing. I have essentially taken Carl Jung’s advice that everyone can make their own Red Book, and I spend most evenings after work painting or writing, candles lit, until I fall asleep. I am currently working on a group show called Love: a romantics guide to overflowing and possibly drowning in the richness of small encounters. Which I attempt to hold love in all the work I produce- whether it be art or day-to-day living. This process helps me enjoy the everyday changes of lust, leaves, money, God, saints, devils, broken windows and decaying monuments. But most importantly makes me ponder love frequently – which is a constantly enriching act.
Tony Jackson
Travelling at the end of summer in a foreign land was full of happiness & strong surprises- the joy the Amish display during ‘Harvest’, the surreal fun of Santa Monica Pier amusement park, and Pittsburgh’s “Cathedral of Learning” for hope. These photos evoke special memories of Summer in an unfamiliar place.
Vanessa Esau
Vanessa Esau is an artist based in Geelong, Victoria, working with a focus on hand-cut collage. In her collages, Vanessa explores placing familiar objects into unfamiliar situations, settings and combinations.
She uses vintage magazines, second-hand books, old postcards and other found materials to create her collages, with 1950s and 1960s advertising, word play, bright colours and the natural world frequent themes in her work. Vanessa loves the creative editing process that goes into making a collage – sourcing, selecting and combining different images and materials to create something new.
Watson Broadfoot
Watson’s work is a creative alchemy of intense and bold works which merge aesthetics and a precise narrative to invite viewers to engage with abstraction. Watson enjoys a directness and rawness in her works that allows the expression of her emotions, where the allure of paint provides a physicality of communication and permanence. The interplay of intense colours and stark contrasts is not accidental but a deliberate strategy to invoke a visceral response. She builds up richly layered compositions integrating both abstract elements with figurative or symbolic symbols inspired by living on the Northern Beaches.
These pieces point to the sensory delights of summer treats which combines a feel-good, sweetness and ability to trigger positive emotional and social effects. People’s moods are boosted by the feeling of warmth and tenderness of summer. A simple melting gelato or treat at the beach can evoke happy memories of childhood and provide a source of comfort and a way to connect with others. There’s a sense of pleasure and accomplishment if you can eat it before it melts! Watson’s approach to creating art is akin to an arena of exploration – amidst the colour and chaos remains positivity and optimism. Stay vibrant.
Wilani van Wyk-Smit
Wilani is a Melbourne-based designer, abstract painter, and sculptor. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Communication from Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and began her creative journey exhibiting in both solo and group shows.
After immigrating to Australia, she focused on raising a family while establishing her design studio where she is currently Creative Director. In 2019, she returned to her artistic practice, engaging in exhibitions, curation, public art installations and commissioned works.
Her multidisciplinary practice includes drawing, animation, photography, and painting with oils, acrylics, inks, and earth pigments. She also creates sculptural pieces using wood, clay, metal, and mixed media. Most recently she was a finalist in the Association of Sculptors of Victoria Award, as well as a finalist in the Yering Station Sculpture Award. Wilani’s creative career spans over two decades and her work is held in local and international collections.
Central to her artistic exploration is the idea of shifting perception and cycles of insight. The intent of her art is to communicate a message that evolves from first glance and continues to reveal itself as life unfolds. Wilani’s work explores changing perspectives and the meaning we attach to the things we see.