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My process is an intuitive one. I don't work from photographs or sketches I don’t always have a specific view in mind when I paint. I will start with a mark, a colour, a memory, a word or piece of music in my head and go from there.

I begin each painting with a period of ‘play’ or experimentation, moving paint, mark-making, trying out ideas. Sometimes I sand my paintings back after a few layers of paint, revealing interesting textures and surprising marks. And then I begin to layer again.

I enjoy trying to communicate without words when putting a piece of work together, for me I like to make my paintings a visual journey, where the discovery of small details within the work helps build a story or evokes an emotion within the viewer that draws them back to the piece again and again.

I’ve always been drawn to the layers and texture within a piece and so my art includes the use of line work, inks, pencils, collage and experimenting with different tools away from the brush, that helps create different one-off marks.

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Kerry Rushton has a menagerie of talents. From professional artist to passionate ‘beginner’s
Instructor’. Kerry had a 10 year career painting on film and theatre sets before running her own art
classes and establishing an art gallery. She was recently the Artist in Residence at the Monet in
Paris Experience and taught hundreds of people how to ‘paint like Monet’.
She is predominately self-taught with skills in illustration, murals and abstract expressionism.
Kerry loves to create luscious layers and then strip them away to reveal the history within. Her
work is spontaneous and explores rich, deep colours and neutrals.
“I start with chaos and then sensitively discover the story within”.
Kerry strives to inspire the student to rediscover their innate creativity. Observe, connect with and
embody the confidence that comes with learning to paint and make pictures.

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Louise Saunders OAM (Watercolour, Pastels)

After spending 4.5 years as the Artist in Residence at Couran Cove Island Resort on the Gold Coast, Louise developed her passion for ecoscience and wildlife with expeditions for EarthWatch, learning Bayik painting in Thailand and Borneo to work on illustrations for an identification key guide.

In 2015 Louise was part of the inaugural Artist in Residence programme at the Ecoscience Precinct at Dutton Park in Brisbane. She is a member of the Botanic Artists' Sociaty of Queensland, the Queensland Wildlife Artists' Society Inc and the Pastel Society of Australia. Louise is an artists and illustrator who is recognised as a specialist in botanicla and natural history subjects and was recognised for her wildlife work with the medal of the Order of Australia.

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Bronwyn Searle
Bronwyn has been painting and drawing, in one form or another, all her life.
Today, as an emerging (and highly collectable) painter in oils, her work reflects her passion for capturing the light, and is influenced by her depth of experience in illustrative technique. Bronwyn enjoys the challenge of taking ordinary, everyday scenes and interpreting them in her own inimitable and increasingly widely recognised style. Working in oils on canvas, she loves to explore the technique of chiaroscuro.
Bronwyn has recently returned to still life painting, while continuing to explore the detail found in leaf litter and textures in the urban world. She is drawn to the unique beauty found in ordinary settings. This direction suits her technique and eye for detail.
Born in Brisbane, Australia, and trained at the Brisbane College of Art, Bronwyn worked professionally in the art field for more than 25 years, starting as a graphic artist and moving on to exhibition design and illustration. She spent 18 years at the Queensland Museum, designing displays and illustrating museum publications, including the Sciencentre’s picture book, "Velvet the Flying Gecko."
Bronwyn collaborated with her writer husband Rick on two children’s picture books, “Slam Dunk Tim” and “Follow Me,” which were published by Random House and Scholastic respectively. Leaving the Museum in 2002, she freelanced as an illustrator, with regular commissions from John Wiley Australia Publishers.
In 2012 Bronwyn was invited to be represented by the Lethbridge Gallery, Paddington, Brisbane after winning first prize in the Lethbridge 10000 Small Scale Art Awards. She exhibits a new collection of works there each year.
Her paintings are held in a number of private collections, in Australia and overseas.
She is also happy to take commissions.

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Zoe Sernack is a Sydney-based artist whose practice explores the Australian landscape through abstraction, memory and materiality. Drawing inspiration from native bushland and parks surrounding her, she creates richly layered works that reflect a deep connection to place.

Working primarily on timber panels, Zoe combines painting, carving, drawing and collage-like processes to build textured surfaces that evoke the rhythms, patterns and subtle details of the natural world. Her works are informed by direct observation, field sketches and an enduring fascination with the way landscape is experienced, remembered and reinterpreted over time.

A graduate of the National Art School with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Zoe has maintained a dedicated studio practice for almost three decades. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout Australia and selected as a finalist in numerous respected art prizes, including the Salon des Refusés, Fisher's Ghost Art Award, Hornsby Art Prize, Gosford Art Prize, Into the Light Art Award and the Lethbridge Landscape Prize.

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When people ask artist Jeffrey Service where he gets his ideas from, the answer is simple... They come from the haphazard adventures of his everyday life – which in Jeffery’s case has taken him to many exotic and far-flung places: from New York to El Salvador and New Mexico, from Sweden to Morocco and across the Australian outback.

Jeffrey, born in Bundaberg, left Australia in 1969 chasing the Summer of Love to a hippie commune in California. He took up batik painting and sold five thousand of them during a 20-year-love affair with that art form. Several of his batiks hang in the U.S. Library of Congress, the King of Thailand bought one, and Elizabeth Taylor bought two.

These days, Jeffrey works in water colour on paper, and in smaller sizes than the large batiks he’s famous for, but everyday life continues to inspire his quirky vision. Over the years Jeffrey has exhibited and taught across the USA, Australia and most recently, the Tiwi Islands.

It’s impossible to look at a Jeffrey Service painting and not smile. And that, to him, is a sign of success.

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Untutored Session. Tutor of Bienarté

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"When I paint, I find my everyday concerns fall away and I’m left with only the joy of colour and canvas."

After growing up in Japan, Ai arrived in Australia in 2005 and in 2010 she established herself as a respected and accomplished artist in Brisbane. Her exquisite oil paintings of nature – most often featuring water – offer viewers a feeling of depth, calm and serenity…. much like Ai herself.

Ai now also shares her knowledge and great love of painting with students as part of the Brisbane Painting Classes core team.

In 2010, Ai won the inaugural Lethbridge 10 000 Art Award. She has had numerous solo exhibitions of her work at Lethbridge Gallery in Brisbane, as well as exhibiting in Sydney, Melbourne and San Diego art fairs.

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Caroline Shapley. Tutor of Bienarté

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Llewellyn Skye, known simply as Skye, is a dynamic, passionate and soulful visual artist, whose unique and expressive abstract paintings are captivating public and private collectors around the globe. Drawing inspiration from lyrics, poetry and nature, in particular florals, Skye’s work evokes romance and drama.

Completing her BFA at the National Art School, followed by an advanced diploma at the Sydney Gallery School, Skye is an accomplished artist whose work has been represented in over 60 exhibitions and 12 solo shows. She received the Fenton & Fenton 2021 Rising Talent Award, ALA 2021 Abstract Artist Award, 2018 BLA Award, was highly commended in the John Olsen drawing prize and was awarded a painting residency in Italy. She has undertaken a significant number of notable commissions, and her works can be found in a number of public and private collections in Australia and abroad.