Hayley Lever| Impressionist painter

Richard Hayley Lever (1876-1958) was an Australian-American painter, etcher, lecturer and art teacher.

His work was part of the art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics and the 1932 Summer Olympics.

Richard Hayley Lever was born and brought up in Adelaide, Australia.

He trained as an artist there under the guidance of James Ashton, an English born seascape artist whose son he was later to befriend in St Ives. In 1894 he set sail to Europe to finish his art studies.

Whilst in Paris he studied the human figure under Rene-Francois-Xavier Prinet but showed a natural inclination for open-air subjects and marine pictures.

Andrew Tischler, 1983 | Realist painter

Australian painter Andrew Tischler enjoys a thriving art career in his chosen field of realism painting, capturing the magnificence of some of the world’s most harsh, beautiful and imposing landscapes such as the Kimberley, Pilbara, Murray River Region, Great Ocean Rd, Flinders Ranges and the USA.

Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865-1915)

Emanuel Phillips Fox was an Australian impressionist painter.

After studying at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne, Fox travelled to Paris to study in 1886 and enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he gained first prize in his year for design, and École des Beaux-Arts (1887-90), where his masters included William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme, both among the most famous artists of the time.

Janet Knight | Figurative painter

Janet Knight is an professional award winning Melbourne artist.

With painting experience of over 25 years, Janet graduated from Ballarat University majoring in graphic design.

Janet’s current works are an indication of her dedication to her passion and her field.

With her connection to nature and the environment Janet’s unique personal skills and interpretation she always manages to finish a piece with a unique style all of her own.

Anelia Pavlova, 1956

Anelia Pavlova / Анелия Павлова, also known as Annael, is a Bulgarian-born Australian artist.

She was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1956, and in 1993 moved to Adelaide, South Australia.

Her best known image is the Semillon label for the Semillon wine in the Peter Lehmann Wines "Art Series" range.

Warwick Fuller, 1948 | Plein air painter

Warwick Fuller: "I want my pictures to sing the songs I sang when I painted them. My hope is that if I can paint with the joy of that moment, something of my emotional responses to the moment will shine through".

Warwick Fuller is a renowned proponent of plein air impressionist painting who has been painting professionally in Australia for over 40 years.

Fuller lives on the fringe of the Blue Mountains, in a remote location deep within the Kanimbla Valley.

Perched high on a hillside and with breathtaking views of stunning local scenery, he doesn't need to travel far for inspiration.

Isabella Karolewicz | Romantic painter

Isabella Karolewicz is an Australian, Melbourne based artist who is passionate about the many beauties life has to offer.

She has a raw, natural talent and has chosen Artist mentoring over formal art education, always staying true to her vision and direction.

She is currently completing her degree in Bussiness at RMIT University to expand her knowledge.

Isabella began her artistic journey focusing on the traditional styles using oils which are her favorite medium to work with.

Nora Heysen | Portrait / Still-life / War painter

From: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

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Daughter of renowned landscape painter Hans Heysen, Nora Heysen (1911-2003) established her own reputation as a distinguished portrait and still-life painter, becoming the first woman to win the Archibald Prize and to be appointed an Australian official war artist during the Second World War.

Born at Hahndorf, South Australia, the fourth child of Hans and Selma Heysen, Nora received her earliest art training from her father.

At fifteen she commenced studies at the School of Fine Arts, Adelaide, under F. Millward Grey, where she received a traditional academic training, learning to draw from plaster casts and live models.

James Guppy, 1954 | Surrealist painter

Born in London, James Guppy has moved to Australia since 1982 and lives in Byron Bay. He has a BA (Hons) in Economics and a Masters in Visual Arts from the UK.

- "When we think of European art, one of the first images that comes to mind is of a richly coloured and modelled oil painting - a portrait, landscape or still life. The illusion in this painting is so real that we feel a heightened sense of the material world: the work seems to be a window into another space.

Throughout my career I have been asking myself whether this heritage has any relevance now. Since the development of photography, the role of figurative painting in portraiture and as social chronicle has all but died and the craft of illusionary painting has become largely relegated to the backwaters of romantic nostalgia and reactionary historicism".

- "Painting in general will clearly continue; but have the figurative traditions of illusionism been technologically outflanked by photography, film and computer generated imagery? Frankly, I don't know and I sometimes wonder at the quixotic nature of my need to find a contemporary relevance for these pre-modernist styles of depiction.

My paintings are all in acrylic. I love oils but the facility I gained as a mural artist working with fast drying paints means I can get the same effects as oils quicker, without worrying about the more complex chemistry of oils. I also get a sort of perverse pleasure creating paintings that can look like they were painted in one medium when in fact they were painted in another.

I use different strategies to develop the subject matter for each series of works. I begin with a point of fascination and the scent of an idea".

- "This period of tracking down the vision may take weeks or years. I will return to themes from years ago if I think I might have something more to add or a new take on it. There is then a slow stumbling towards the form and how the idea or vision might be made to work successfully.

Some works begin with thumbnail sketchs of inner visions and ideas with no models in the outside world (ie. It's all "made up"). As often as not, I am a merciless appropriator, constructing my paintings from details taken from old photos, old masterpieces, flower catalogues, magazines etc.

Some works require the use of models either in conjunction with appropriated material or on their own. In these cases I will either photograph or work from life, whichever is appropriate".

- "The actual execution of a painting begins with a fairly clear vision. At any one time my studio walls are covered with many canvases in varying stages of completion.

When I get "stuck" on a work, I either begin a new one or return to a piece in progress on the wall. I usually have about twenty canvases in various stages of completion. I get "stuck" a lot.

Quite a few works "in progress" will actually end up permanently unresolved waiting in the reject pile till I can reuse the canvas.

The actual execution begins by covering the white gesso with a coloured ground. This might be anything from black, burnt sienna, terra verte or scarlet. I then carefully grid up my design and transpose it to the canvas using white conte.

The first coat of acrylic is applied thick with no water. Subsequent layers are more and more diluted and the brushes tend to get smaller and more delicate as I progress. I usually varnish with two coats of dilute acrylic medium and a final coat of Paraloid varnish.

Paintings are rarely "finished" rather it's the case that I give up and hope that I can resolve the next one a little better. The work then is declared "finished" often by my deliberate signing of it. This stops dead any tendency I might have to continue toying with the piece".

Nato a Londra, James Guppy si è trasferito in Australia dal 1982 e vive a Byron Bay.

Per i primi quindici anni della sua carriera Guppy è stato un artista murale per puoi convertirsi alla tela, poiché gli piaceva trovare le sue opere per le strade.

Nel corso della sua carriera, l'argomento di Guppy è variato da momenti surreali, scene di tensione, esplosioni fluttuanti, donne formidabili ed esseri antropomorfi, tutti eseguiti con un approccio raffinato e intelligente, che appaiono sia drammatici che realistici.

Una parte del fascino delle opere di Guppy risiede nella sua capacità di trasmettere l'impossibilità tangibile, sia che si tratti di cercare di rappresentare la fluidità della sessualità creando generi alternativi (1998); produrre immagini di lavoratori che inchiodano alla sabbia il bordo dell'oceano (2002); o ritrarre uomini in giacca e cravatta che navigano in oceani ruggenti, paesaggi pastorali, paesaggi apocalittici e nuvole cariche di suspense, pur rimanendo disconnessi dal mondo che li circonda mentre svolgono i loro "affari" (2014-2015).

Rupert Bunny | Colorist / Symbolist painter

Australian painter Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny (1864-1947) was one of the most successful expatriate artists of his generation.

No other Australian artist achieved the critical acclaim that he enjoyed in Paris. An erudite painter of ideal themes, and the creator of the most ambitious Salon paintings produced by an Australian, Bunny is an exotic in the history of Australian art.

An exhibition, Rupert Bunny artist in Paris, curated by Deborah Edwards, Senior Curator of Australian Art, will honour the work of this great Australian artist.

The exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales will showcase more than 85 of his most significant paintings, many unseen in Australia, including works from the Musée d’Orsay and Fonds national d’art contemporain in Paris and private lenders including Kerry Stokes, Jeffrey Archer and Dame Elisabeth Murdoch.

Dora Meeson (1869-1955)

Dora Meeson was an Australian artist and an elected member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in London, England.

She was a member of the British Artists' Suffrage League.

Although born in Melbourne, Dora Meeson moved with her family to London as a child, and commenced her art studies at the Slade School.

In 1895 she returned to the antipodes and spent two years at Melbourne's National Gallery School, where she met her future husband, George Coates, before returning again to Europe just as Coates won the Travelling Scholarship.

Jane Sutherland (1853-1928) | Impressionist painter

Jane Sutherland was an Australian landscape painter who was part of the pioneering plein-air movement in Australia, and a member of the Heidelberg School. Her advocacy to advance the professional standing of female artists during the late nineteenth century was also a notable achievement.

Jane Sutherland was born in New York to Scottish parents; the family emigrated to Sydney in 1864 and moved to Melbourne in 1870.

Bessie Davidson | An Australian Impressionist in Paris

Bessie Ellen Davidson (1879-1965) was an Australian painter🎨 known for her impressionist, light-filled landscapes and interiors.

Davidson was born on 22 May 1879 in North Adelaide, South Australia, to a family of Scottish and English origin.

In 1904, after her mother's death, she went to Europe to study art in company with Preston.

They spent the first few months in Munich, where Davidson studied briefly at the Künstlerinner Verein, before moving on to Paris.

There she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, under René-Xavier Prinet🎨, where she met and began a lifelong friendship with Philippe Besnard's future wife, Germaine Desgranges. She also took classes with Raphael Collin, Richard Miller and Gustave Courtois.

Jim Tsinganos | Surrealist / Conceptual painter / Illustrator

Jim Tsinganos is a Sydney🎨 based Illustrator with over 20 years experience who has had 2 working stints in Amsterdam.

He is the recipient of numerous awards, both locally and internationally and is represented in the UK and the US. Working primarily with pastels and watercolor, he is interested in creating work with a strong conceptual basis.

Robert Hagan, 1947 | Plein Air painter

Robert Hagan raised in the lush, languorous sub-tropical northern New South Wales, Australia and educated at Newcastle University, he communicates in a typical offhanded Aussie manner.

Widely traveled with studios in Suffolk, England, San Diego, USA, Southport, Australia and Pattaya, Thailand.

Robert goes about his art with confidence, humility and pragmatism.

He explains, "When you look at things you tend to concentrate on one element, a boy or girl at the waters edge, for example".

Arthur Streeton | Impressionist painter

Sir Arthur Streeton (1867-1943) was one of the foremost Australian Impressionist painters, and his paintings continue to count among the most iconic images of Australian art.

Streeton’s artistic training began aged 15, with night classes in design at Melbourne’s National Gallery School, while he worked as an office clerk and, later, as an apprentice lithographer.

He read amateur art manuals imported from Europe and America that encouraged painting en plein air.

Ethel Carrick (1872-1952)

Ethel Carrick, also known by her married name of Ethel Carrick Fox (she married the Australian Impressionist painter Emanuel Phillips Fox in 1905), was an English-born Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painter.

Much of her career was spent in France and in Australia, where she was associated with the movement known as the Heidelberg School.

Paul Jones (1921-1997) | Flowers of May

Paul Jones is an Australian painter who has painted these beautiful botanical illustrations in a manner very reminiscent of Thornton’s Temple of Flora.

His watercolor paintings are widely held in museum collections and included in several interesting exhibits linked below, at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and the Smithsonian in Washington DC and he is considered one of the finest botanical artists of the last 150 years.

Gil Bruvel, 1959 | Stainless Steel sculptures

A word from Gil Bruvel🎨...

“I am artist because it is the conduit to release the ideas and visuals I carry daily. Since I was a little boy I have pursued my own exploration rooted in the unconscious mind and nurtured with daily practice using a variety of mediums of artistic expression. My artistic process developed organically from my father's cabinet shop to the stainless steel sculptures I create today.

Catherine Abel, 1966 | Art Déco painter

Australian artist, Catherine Abel is renowned internationally for her striking figurative oil paintings. Combining the sleek, stylised geometry of the Art Déco period with the clarity, richness of colour, and depth of light of the Italian Renaissance Masters, her works are powerfully seductive compositions of beauty, elegance, strength and grace.

Long inspired by the art movements and the bold angular shapes of the early 20th century, Australian artist Catherine Abel creates striking figurative oil paintings.