Anthony Breslin has been an original force within the Australian art scene since the late 90’s.

His career encompasses myriad creative and artistic pursuits including painting, performance, poetry, design and production.

Up until his 2014 diagnosis of blood cancer, he created more than 50 solo exhibitions both nationally and internationally - these include shows in Hong Kong, Zurich, Prague, Barcelona, Shanghai, Bern, London and Dublin.

Breslin is passionate about working with marginalized groups and schools to build awareness and focus on the importance of community, belonging and rites of passage.

Kylie Sirett draws inspiration for her intimate still life works from her immediate surroundings. She draws attention to light and its effect on surfaces and textures.

Using common objects, Kylie’s compositions highlight not only aesthetic beauty through colour, form and light, but also the relationship between objects and the space they individually hold.

Kylie works from her studio in Hurstbridge.

Katia Honour is a passionate visionary artist based in Northcote. Her mischtechnik artworks offer sensations of peace and transcendence through delicately built up layers of tempera, oils and glazes to create sensorial invitations into dreamy idealism. She is fascinated by people’s search for meaning and context.

Since 2011, Katia’s paintings have regularly exhibited and been held on permanent display at galleries in US, Europe, Australia and Bali. She also teaches and presents at global shamanic arts events.

In 2012, Katia founded Ecstatic Arts Collective and Visionary Art Atelier to host master-artist residency programs. Katia was awarded a diploma at the Moscow Visionary Art Awards, she featured at Alex Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, New York and in Austria’s Legacy of Light exhibition in memory of their famous mischtechnik artist, Ernst Fuchs.

Rona Green is highly regarded for her fantastical figurative pictures that explore ideas about the nature of individuality.

Specifically, her interest is in the potential of the body to be a vehicle for story by means of transformative devices, in particular anthropomorphism and body decoration.

Born in Geelong, Australia, Rona went on to study art at La Trobe University, Bendigo, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, and Monash University, Gippsland.

She has been the recipient of numerous awards for her printmaking including the Geelong Print Prize, Swan Hill Print Acquisitive Award and Silk Cut Award for Linocut Prints Grand Prize.

Her work is represented in over 60 public collections including the National Gallery of Australia.

Born in Melbourne in 1973, Katie Roberts grew up in Melbourne and London where at aged four she had a vision that she was going to be an artist.

She has taken her art seriously ever since. Her parents were heavily involved in the Aboriginal Land Rights movement, she grew up knowing of the injustice of colonialism in Australia, which informs her work as an artist.

She studied fine art at what is now Melbourne Polytechnic from 1991-1995. In 1996 Katie was accepted into BA Fine Art at RMIT, eventually moving from Painting to Drawing, under Godwin Bradbeer and James Taylor.

She received first class Honors when graduating in 1999 and undertook an Honours year in 2000.

After graduating she started Synergy Gallery, a community contemporary art space in High Street Northcote in 2001 with a group of artists and community members.

Katie voluntarily co-ordinated the space for most of ten years, hosting over 200 exhibitions and supporting and nurturing hundreds of local artists. In 2005-2006 Katie Roberts completed a Masters of Fine Art at RMIT on the topic of Light as a Medium.

After this, in 2006 Katie Roberts embarked on a long-term project to re-map the Yarra River in Melbourne including it's layers of history, which she showed in a series of exhibitions culminating in a major exhibition at Montsalvat in 2010.

This project is still ongoing, she has since started investigating tributaries including Darebin Creek – becoming the first Artist in Residence at Darebin Parklands in 2014-15. Then in 2016-17 she became Artist in Residence at Point Nepean on the Mornington Peninsula extending her investigation to the bay.

Katie's artwork addresses the relationship between human's and the natural environment and are both technically skilful and experimental. Her works are held in private collections in Australia and overseas and is especially favoured by locals. Katie has lived in Fairfield for 25 years, where she works from her home studio and teaches art to adults locally. Although you might see her along the rivers and waterways of Melbourne or surrounds, where she makes much of her artwork outdoors.

More of Kate’s work can be seen here

Cy O’Neill studied Fine Arts at Edith Cowan University and went on to further studies at Monash University, completing an Honours degree in Fine Art and a Diploma in Education.

She currently lives and works in Melbourne as an Artist and an Educator.

Bush Pattern

I went off course whilst walking along a bush path in outback Western Australia. The Australian bush can be very disorientating. Thick with branches and foliage it is easy to lose bearings and feel swallowed up by the vegetation.

Without being tethered to a path and feeling in some ways lost senses are heightened. I felt immersed in bush. Sights, sounds and white sun created in my mind a living version of static.

This series of paintings are glimpses and snippets of a huge landscape. Pieced together like a quilt in an attempt to make sense of the chaotic profusion and pattern.

Aylsa McHugh is a Melbourne based artist who works in a variety of media.

Through her work she is interested in conveying the uncanny; the disturbing unfamiliarity of the evidently familiar.

Most recently she has been appropriating images found in magazines and books to create unsettling and elegant juxtapositions.

These assemblages are compelling and perverse, disjointed and harmonious, a celebration of the grotesque and strangely beautiful.

She graduated with a BFA from the Victorian College of the Arts and her work is held in private collections in Australia and overseas.

To view more of her work please visit her instagram profile @aylsa_mchugh or visit https://www.instagram.com/aylsa_mchugh/

Stephen Armstrong is a Melbourne based artist with an extensive exhibiting history.  He has shown in numerous galleries around Australia, has undertaken residencies at Bundanon and St Vincent’s Hospital and is represented in many public and private collections.  

Stephen Armstrong is known as a painter’s painter; other artists admire his ability to capture the world around him in paint.  His paintings are all painted on location in the en plein air tradition of the Australian impressionists.  Darebin Parklands, the waterfront and his backyard are some of his latest subjects. 

Stephen is a parent at Fairfield Primary School and was Artist in Residence this year.  His knowledge and experience were utilized to inspire students in their study of Vincent Van Gogh.

Elizabeth Barnett is a visual artist whose practice encompasses printmaking, painting, illustration and textiles. From the kitchen table to a sea voyage, Elizabeth’s detailed and dreamlike narratives combine playful naivety with a finely honed aesthetic sophistication. Elizabeth’s primary training in Printmaking has instilled in her an appreciation and love of fine materials and classical techniques and processes. 

Elizabeth studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts Printmaking at The Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne 2002-2004, Bachelor Fine Arts Honours - Printmaking, RMIT, Melbourne, 2006 and Masters of Arts- Illustration, Camberwell College of Art, London, 2008-2009. In 2006 Elizabeth was awarded the Collie Print Trust scholarship at the Australian Print Workshop and has continued to work at the APW creating etching plates that she prints in her studio in Richmond. Elizabeth founded Schoolhouse Studios with Alice Glenn in 2010 a not-for-profit artist studios complex in the former St. Joseph's Technical College in Abbotsford. Alice and Elizabeth ran the studios until 2012 until the buildings were demolished to make way for apartments. Schoolhouse Studios has just reopened this year in their new location in Rupert Street, Collingwood. 

In 2013 Elizabeth welcomed her son into the world and has since been discovering details about the world that she had never noticed closely before and most recently Elizabeth has been working from a her new studio in a former shirt factory in Richmond. She is also teaches printmaking, illustration and bookbinding in Melbourne and country NSW. 

Elizabeth exhibits extensively throughout Australia and as is represented by the Art Shop and Gallery in Abergavenny Wales. 

Fine Art Paintings and Prints: www.elizabethbarnett.com

Commercial Illustration work: www.elizabethbarnettillustration.com

Blog: www.elizabethisdrawing.blogspot.com

These paintings were made on location when the Melbourne and Taronga Zoos' elephants were residing in quarantine on the Cocos Islands en route from Thailand in 2006.

Artist Beth Croce (who is also a Mum at FPS) and her family were lucky enough to spend three months getting to know these wonderful individuals, thanks to husband/dad/veterinarian Michael's involvement in the project (he's the head vet at Melbourne Zoo).  

Youngsters themselves when these paintings were made, this original herd has flourished and entrenched themselves in the hearts of Australians.

After graduating in art history, Sandra Eterovic decided that she enjoyed creating things more than writing about what others had already made.

Until recently the surface designer for respected Australian children’s brand Seed, Eterovic is now working as a freelance illustrator and developing a variety of items under her own name.

Her wide ranging skills allow her to create an ever evolving range, from wooden and ceramic objets d’art to handmade textile accessories, knitted items and illustrated paper goods.

Eterovic’s work references her Eastern European heritage and love of retro ephemera.

Her work is imbued with a bright contemporary aesthetic, attention to detail and a quirky sense of humour.

Belinda Fox is an Australian artist based in Singapore.  She is a lyrical, abstract artist who explores the precarious relationship between hope and doubt.  Her artwork reveals her search for balance and harmony in our contemporary world.  Reflecting on and responding to the continual presence of conflict in our lives, Fox's work offers a breathing space to meditate on the beauty that surrounds us.  She has won many prestigious awards, including the the Silk Cut Award for lino cut prints (2004), the Burnie Print Prize (2007) and the Paul Guest Drawing Prize (2010).  Her work is part of state collections such as the National Gallery Australia, National Gallery of Victoria and Artbank.  

David Frazer has held over 40 solo exhibitions in Australia, London and China. 

In 2007 he was the major prize winner of the 1st International Print Biennial in Guanlan China.  In 2004 he won the Broken Hill Outback Art Prize.  In 2013 he won the Acquisitive award at the Silk Cut Award for Linocuts and won the peoples choice award at the Fremantle Print Award as well as a high commendation. In that same year he won the peoples choice award at the Hutchins Art Prize in Tasmania.  In 2014 he won an honourable mention at the International Print Biennial Exhibit held at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Art. 

In 2007 the ABC produced a documentary on Frazer as part of the “Artist at Work” series.

Erin Greer is a Melbourne-based illustrator and painter who creates whimsical, dreamlike worlds full of strange and playful creatures. Using a variety of mediums, from watercolour and ink to aerosol and acrylic, Erin's characters can be found all over Melbourne, from laneway walls to gallery spaces and even in the Mandrills enclosure at the Melbourne Zoo.

To see more of Erin's work click here.

Erin can be contacted at - eringreerart@gmail.com

Melbourne artist Robert Hague has exhibited widely and received a number of significant awards. He has participated in more than 100 exhibitions and his work is represented in public, private and corporate collections. In 2013 his work was celebrated by a comprehensive survey exhibition at Deakin University Gallery, Burwood. This September a major new exhibition of his work including print, video, porcelain, marble, bronze and the 6m stainless steel sculpture Tenjen opens at Fehily Contemporary in Collingwood.

Declan Hallinan is a self-taught artist based in Collingwood. He has been exhibiting his paintings for twenty years

.His work traverses themes of the environment exploring the way humans occupy territory in and around cities.

His subject matter is predominantly of the inner city from Collingwood to Fairfield which he has explored for many years.  

Drawn to the natural environment on the urban edges and the way man and nature interact on the city fringe, Hallinan's work captures the moment  finding beauty in often banal everyday industrial scenes.

He paints what fascinates him and relies on the viewer to connect with the work rather than being told what they should see or think about it. 

Martin King lives Melbourne, Australia.  Martin has had over 40 solo exhibitions throughout Australia and has exhibited in many group exhibitions both in Australia and Internationally.

In 2006 he was awarded the Broken Hill Outback Art Award and in 2003 was awarded the McGivern Art Prize at the Maroondah Art Gallery in Melbourne. He was awarded third prize at the 3rd Kochi International Triennial of prints in Japan in 1999, and received an Honorable Mention for his work at the Bharat Bhavan International Print Biennale in India. He won the Artist Book Prize at the Freemantle Print Award in 1997. 

Martin is represented in collections including the British Museum, London, the Carleton College Library, Minnesota, USA , the  National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of NSW, the Art Gallery of S.A, Museums and the Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.  

His works are also in regional galleries, public libraries, universities and corporate and private collections.

Damon Kowarsky studied printmaking at VCA and Glasgow School of Art and Advanced Figure Drawing with Godwin Bradbeer at RMIT.

Since graduating he has worked as a scientific, courtroom, and archaeological illustrator. In 2002 he assisted on a dig for the Dakhleh Oasis Project Egypt.

In 2007 he taught drawing at Beaconhouse National University Lahore and studied miniature painting under Murad Mumtaz and Mahreen Zuberi. In 2010 he taught printmaking at Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture Karachi and held a successful solo exhibition at Alhamra Art Gallery Lahore.

The recipient of numerous prizes and awards including a Toyota Community Spirit Artist Travel Award and Collie Print Trust Scholarship, Kowarsky has travelled extensively in South Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Architecture and the colours of earth and sky inspire much of his work.

Since 2010 Kowarsky has collaborated with the Japanese artist Kyoko Imazu on a series of prints, zines and site specific installations.

In 2012 he collaborated with the Pakistani artist Muhammad Atif Khan on Hybrid, a suite of 20 etchings, that has been exhibited in Lahore, Islamabad, Philadelphia, Melbourne and Karachi.

Kowarsky exhibits regularly in Australia and abroad. In 2014 he is Artist in Residence at Guanlan Original Printmaking Base in China and NCA Lahore, where he returns to work with Atif Khan on Hybrid II.

www.damon.tk

As a young child Gus moved between Daylesford and Shepparton, before settling, at the age of five, in Euroa, Victoria.

Gus Leunig is a promising young talent to watch. His "My Life Is a Dog" series was a sell-out at Art Sydney 2009 and in 2010 Leunig had his first solo exhibition at Libby Edwards Galleries, Melbourne. The whimsical narratives of his playful canvases reflect on a carefree childhood, evoking a naive nirvana. The indigenous detail and the wonderfully resolved palette proclaim Leunig as a colourist initially and on closer observation, a thoughtful and wry observer of his world.

In 2004, 35 year old Gus lived with artist-father Michael Leunig in the small aboriginal community, Lockhart River at the very northern tip of Cape York Peninsula. Working in the local arts centre alongside local Aboriginal artists his burgeoning love for the territory, 'it's people', and its isolation evoked an overwhelming desire to paint. During this experience, Gus was reminded of his childhood and the most basic of needs - fishing, hunting and laughing.

Glenn Morgan’s somewhat whimsical paintings and sculptures are bright, bustling scenes of figures and movement. His works have a strong local flavour and while often humorous, are keenly observed and socially aware. 

Glenn's three dimensional pieces are rendered in wood, metal, wire, screws and paint and often include handles and levers the viewer can turn and manipulate to literally bring the scenes to life. 

Glenn completed a Diploma of Fine Art at the Warrnambool Institute of Advanced Education and his Postgraduate studies in Printmaking at the Victorian College of the Arts.

His work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Museum of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; Museum of Victoria and the Maritime Museum, Victoria; as well as in several Regional Galleries.

Simon Normand's career as an exhibiting artist spans 30 years and encompasses an array of creative media. His installations have won many awards and received critical acclaim.

Within both urban and rural settings, his work reflects his strong environmental ethos and connection with the Australian landscape.

 His most recent exhibition "Before the Clearing" includes maps and photographs of The Mornington Peninsula depicting Boonwurrung country before colonisation.

He is currently artist in residence at the Austin Hospital where he is working on a series of mosaic wall panels for the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli.

Ország explores the fine line between Utopic and Dystopic ideals by investigating political, religious and social belief systems.

She questions our submission to controlling bodies, the nature of the force used and the repercussions we face as individuals and a society by complying and forfeiting our will.

She has completed a Bachelor of Fine Art, RMIT Unversity and a Diploma ofArt (Graphic Art), Box Hill TAFE.  

She has won numerous awards, most recently the 2015 Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award - Emerging Artist.

Her work is held by Artbank, Gippsland Art Gallery, Siemens Australia and numerous private collections.

Born in Melbourne in 1964, Jim Pavlidis studied Graphic Design at Swinburne Institute of Technology and Visual Art at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Since 1985, he has been a freelance artist and illustrator and he has worked as an artist for The Age newspaper for over 20 years. Between 1995 and 1997, he worked in London for The Independent and Daily Mail newspapers, and in Paris where he was art director for The Paris Free Voice weekly newspaper.

As a painter and printmaker, Pavlidis has exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions in Australia and overseas. He is represented in a number of significant collections including those of the Geelong Gallery, the State Library of Victoria, Deakin University, Monash University, The University of Melbourne, State Library of Queensland, State Library of New South Wales and the National Library of Australia. In 2010 he was awarded a Creative Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria, which culminated in the work created for Accounts of my dancing evenings. Season 1914, showing at the Geelong Gallery until August 24. 

Geoffrey Ricardo is a Melbourne based artist who essentially employs a figurative based narrative language.  Drawing on a heritage of Surrealism and figurative expressionism the work explores personal and broader issues. Often tinged with humour and a feeling of the absurd. The images are in one way or another a comment on the human condition. On first encounter the pictures are slightly satirical, comic or absurd, underlying this there is a deeper questioning of human nature.

Geoffrey has held regular solo and group exhibitions since 1990 with works  in various public and private collections in Australia and overseas.

Geoffrey is represented by Australian Galleries in Melbourne and Sydney.

Melinda Schawel has always been drawn to the physicality of creative process, and allowed the non-rational act of making to guide the development of her atmospheric imagery. Previously this affinity for process has led her to explore printmaking, yet over recent years she has expanded her repertoire to incorporate numerous techniques executed on paper and wood. Through scraping, sanding, painting, perforating, drawing, cutting, drilling and tearing, Schawel crafts her artwork in a manually intensive process that belies the graceful abstracted visions that result.

Working with a pared back palette of neutral tones that are accented by bold reds and graphic yellows, Schawel’s works appear both primordial and feather-light. The artist strikes a balance between control and chaos as she manipulates her medium and the ever-present element of surprise to create shapes and forms of a largely variegated nature.

www.melindashawel.com

With a pervasive playfulness and sense of absurd humour, Tai Snaith works across many materials and within widely varying sites and contexts including collage, drawing, painting, performance, installation and publishing. Her practice is often personal, collaborative and experimental and frequently includes imagery of animals and humans derived from her childhood memories and faded cultural signifiers or relics. Born in 1980 in Australia, Snaith holds a BFA (Hons) from the Victorian College of the Arts. 

In addition to practicing as an artist, she is a curator, producer and writer. Tai has shown extensively both in Australia and overseas; written for Art & Australia, Architecture Australia, Artichoke, Yen and Un magazine; is a visual arts reviewer on TripleR radio; and worked as a producer for the Next Wave Festival, Melbourne Fringe Festival and Melbourne Emerging writers festival. Tai has been awarded the Australia Council Tokyo studio and last year has been shortlisted for the Hutchins Art Prize and the Manning Prize and awarded the Banyule works on paper prize.

For more information or enquiries contact www.taisnaith.com

Clare Whitney studied Fine Art at The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 1991-1993, R.M.I.T, where she majored in painting.

Since completing her degree in 1994, she has traveled, lived and worked in Western Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan and Fiji.

Throughout her travels Clare set up working studios and taught printmaking and painting in local schools and community groups, from very young children to adults.

These experiences allowed her the opportunity to express and exhibit her own artworks both interstate and abroad. Influenced by her immediate environment and personal experience; the landscape, human figure, and organic forms are captured and translated through rich colours and symbolic shapes on canvas and paper.

Images of insects, birds and fish represent other ‘worlds’ that co-exist alongside mankind. Clare’s images illustrate the ideal of man/woman becoming one with these ‘worlds’ once again.

www.clarewhitney.com

Our feature artists this year included Jackie Case, Andrew Pearson, Kyoko Imazu, Rona Green, Dean Bowen, Sophia Szilagyi, Emma de Clario, Georgia Thorpe, Joy Smith, Robert Hague, Louise Rippert, Charlotte Lance and Robert Bridgewater

First Prize - Emma De Clario

Hangers Prize - Declan Halinan

Highly Commended - Kyoko Imazu, Suzanne Hutton, Louise Rippert, Charlie House, Robert Hague

Our feature artists this year included Geoffrey Ricardo, Geoff Cunnngham, Graham Base, Darren Doyle, Roz McQuillan, Julie Jame, Suzanne Hutton, Stephen Armstrong, Wendy Grace, Linda Robertson, Mitch Vane, Shaun Tan, Jackie Case, Kate Hudson and Kyoko Imazu.

First Prize - Kyoko Imazu

Hangers Prize - Jackie Case

We have had some wonderful artists open Art4All.  And fabulous artists have been the recipients of our prizes in more recent years.