Art

Tom McAulay paints the characters of the bush. Weather-beaten stockmen, dust drifting from the brim of their hats and their eyes narrowed against a harsh inland sun, come to life on his canvases...

Rich memories from a childhood lived on three continents and world travels as an adult have helped map a celebrated career for Top End abstract artist Nina Battley. Nina was born in Germany to an...

It was 1995 when Steve and Tracey Lee stood in the audience listening to the Dead Ringer Band, the family band of country songstress Kasey Chambers. Tracey was struck with an idea. “I thought...

 Bush birds, quolls, whispering paperbarks on a backyard billabong, and a dingo dog rescued from a mountain pound. They’ve all inspired the works of the Northern Territory’s Marnie...

 It was 2007 when Anne Weygood first encountered Oz Opera. In her second year as principal of St Joseph’s College, the company’s Katherine venue, a crew member bowled up, asking...

  Seated at the snug kitchen table sipping coffee, Tony McMillan keeps sneaking glances over his shoulder to the back door. His body is tense. His large frame dwarfs the dainty kitchen chair....

  A crash course in language opens the show as the all-female choir teaches the audience how to sing Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in Pitjantjatjara. Smiles and then giggles pass across the...

When John Murray was in his early thirties he flipped a coin, the outcome of which changed the course of his life. He wanted to get out of the city and see more of Australia but he wasn’t sure...

Brett Garling is in the backyard of his home and studio in Wongarbon, in central New South Wales, squatting down in front of a sculpture reminiscent of a large horse. He wears a pair of old shorts, a...

In a bustling café on Keppel Street in her hometown of Bathurst in central-west New South Wales, artist Gemma Lynch-Memory sits with her husband Terry. Between sips of coffee and amid the...

Standing in the kitchen of her house outside Tamworth, in northern New South Wales, Jan Austin agrees it’s just as well she can draw because she hates to cook. “I love reading recipes, but I...

A COUPLE of tin men stand at the watch as visitors approach Keith Cameron’s Tabulam property in northern New South Wales. In the distance, a calf scratches against a gigantic red chair, and an...

The Pilbara may well mean mining to most – iron, and the massive machinery that extracts and processes it, the seemingly endless ore trains, and big bulk carriers lining up at the ports. To...

For Bob Landt, water and oil do mix. Bob is a watercolour artist of renown, who has also made a living among the grease and grime of the mechanic’s workshop. It is hard to reconcile his big,...

The call of a butcherbird ready to nest filters into the old bakery where Tim Winters paints. Standing by the window, Tim marvels at how lush and green his property has become with the recent rain....

Any artist can experience feelings of isolation and this is exacerbated for those whose lives and work are moulded by the vastness of the outback. Six rural artists have overcome this by banding...

No concert hall or opera house in the world could possibly match the venue for the grand finale of the Mungindi Music Festival. The audience sits under the open sky, painted in twilight shades of...

YOU can hear the cicadas singing, feel the baking heat and smell the gum trees in the paintings of Richard Bogusz. But the Queenslander admits he has never really been to the outback. “None of...

“I love this spot up here and I love the history. It’s wonderful that I can carve what I want to carve and have people come and pay to look at it.” Greg Duncan is musing upon what...

Upon entering Joanna Logue’s studio, an immediate calm settles across the atmosphere. Large canvases in various states of completion are hung for contemplation and orderly piles of...

On Christmas Eve last year, Lorin Nicholson performed alongside singer Anthony Callea before an audience of more than 10,000 people at Melbourne’s iconic Carols by Candlelight. It was a high...

Kellerberrin, 205 kilometres east of Perth, looks like any Western Australian wheat belt town: the obligatory strip of shops lining the dusty main drag, some empty and for sale; the massive steel...

Mention ‘ooline’ to most people and they will give you a quizzical look. To others it is a large, attractive tree, stands of which can be seen from northern New South Wales through to...

Frogs play the fiddle, dogs chase chooks and men round-up spotted cows while hanging on to wild horses. These are some of the fanciful figures that feature on Penny Hoskins’ ceramics, with...

A sense of creativity fills the air, spiced with the earthy tones of sawdust and lacquer. Chairs, tables, blueprints and inspirational works of art – at varying stages of evolution –...

Richard Woldendorp stands on a boulder outside the house where he and his wife Lyn live in the hills east of Perth. He is looking out across a valley in the late afternoon, towards a ridge that is...

Bull Market couldn’t have been a more apt title for Angus McDonald’s collection of artworks. The 42 year-old traded the fast-paced, high-stress life of a city-based stockbroker for the...

For Chris Barr, an artist from the Arcadia Valley, Qld, traditional bush art is a real passion. He has taken his trade of leather plaiting and whipmaking beyond a craft to an art form, with his...

When Bill O’Shea told his boss he was “pulling the plug”, the retort was he had to find his replacement first. He talked a friend into taking his place and, in 1974, stepped into...