Art Word Place

Caroline Downer is the Executive Director of Arts North West. She has over 20 years’ experience in the gallery sector, in curatorial and public programs and as the previous Director of the New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale. Caroline holds a Bachelor of Arts, a Bachelor of Music and a Master of Arts (Museum Studies) from the University of Melbourne.

She participates in a broad range of the arts from visual arts and film to music and plays the viola da gamba in her spare time.

Jo White

Nicole Alexander

Reflections 2019 Acrylic on canvas 61 x 61 cm

By the river then

By the river then.

Where shaded nooks land-locked by night grow dew-fresh, as the light snail-silver in its dawn, presses afresh the baptismal hand.

Here then a shining memory.

The child who came. The blanket spread.

The catch of hem at the edge where water sucks and algae grows, unbridled.

And captured in that green-blue swirl, a woody heart knot-strained by age gives thanks for sun-speared, glass-leafed days, laughter-filled and joyous.

I sound the rungs of the water-tank, drumming with knuckles on iron, until resonant, they answer me, speaking of many things – Of first light fingering green leaves, the murmur of stirring birds, frog song and cricket call; of the flight of hesitant clouds across the cup of the sky, the sweet cool depths of shadowed things and rivers with outflung arms; of noon and night and spreading time, plains and hills and horizons and of the wistful wind, that brings the scent of coming rain.

Anne Bell

Maree Kelly

Resonance

Resonance 2019 Oil on canvas 61 x 91 cm

Michael Burge

Max Powell

Gatekeeper’s Cottage, southern Deepwater

Walking the Tracks 2019 Stoneware, reduction fired ceramics with slips and glaze 580h x 250w x 500d cm

Our plan to return didn’t include a home yard festooned with skulls, tangles of iron and broken bottles; but whenever it rains, bones leach out of this old patch.

Raised by hand, the ballast pile still bites enough to walk the tracks. If you’re prepared to kick over nails that gave up long ago, and jump the snakes, you’ll see where the culvert cleaved one hillside into two.

The intersecting highway crumbled long before it closed, yet its camber hits redundant rails so sharply you’ll look both ways, even now.

Gates swing only for roos and livestock these days.

The gatekeepers are a memory. Their nameless valley, once alert to travellers, now looks inward.

Infinite, the level midden of the track will emulate the hill, watched by the spreading gum that shelters rabbits, and the dam that never dries.

An ancient name will leach from the clay that forms the cottage, eventually. This crossing always warns the sentinels what’s coming.

Esther Gardiner

Elizabeth Munro

Inverell

Inverell my home 2019 Acrylic on canvas 61 x 92 cm

A river is flowing through my Country, Where Dreamtime stories are told, To children around a campfire, Where embers brightly glow.

Dancers dance in time to clapsticks, Heard through a sunset sky, From a Dreamtime story told,

By Elders long ago.

My Country is a special place, Where I am always at home.

Where the Ancestors look with caring eyes, At the children which have grown.

As I journey in my life wherever I go, My Country is calling me to where a river flows.

I am always in the Dreamtime, At Inverell‌My home.

Paula Jenkins

John Heffernan

Deep Time Dreaming 2019 Oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm

Beyond the Deep Time Door

It calls me.

Incessantly it calls, myriad wordless voices shrieking to remind me of who I am and what and why, and where it is that I belong in the vast cicada song of the sky.

It is the feral we’ve forgotten, the wild that is not in us any more, the beast we can’t ignore.

It visits me.

In many forms it comes: drumming on the roof; sunrises riddled with brilliant specs of truth; shimmers from the diamond-dusted sea, spies on me through the night sky’s cobalt eye; echoes in an eagle’s cry.

It joins me by the stream, whispering among the trees, swapping secrets with the leaves.

Wakes me in the night, meets me in my dreams where nothing is what nothing seems simple yet sublime.

And together we climb to that special place on the liquid ridge of time.

To glimpse the thing we’ve left behind, the feral we’ve forgotten, the wild that is not in us any more, the beast we can’t ignore, the one that wails beyond the Deep Time Door.

E.A. Horne

Michelle Hungerford

New England

Trickster tablelands 2019 Acrylic and charcoal on aluminium composite board 820 x 1220 cm

I am water-bound a southerner this north is not my country yet here is the circle on my finger and every return pulses with blood’s homecoming pull and always, the trickster tablelands rise in greeting high above their sea feet a ring of aeons-old rock my little island flung into the sky and given shocking, giddy edges.

Peter Champion

Heather Kerridge

The Renewal 2019 Oil on canvas 91 x 62 cm

Heart-warming landscape

Open space offers freedom.

Distant vistas span the horizon.

Fresh air breathes hope.

Hills rise above fertile valleys and farmhouses nestle in their green folds.

Peacefully grazing herds and flocks share their feed with hungry wildlife.

Wind farms surge with energy.

Precious sapphires sparkle.

Life springs forth under summer rains.

Sparkling creeks delight the senses.

Weeping willows hug the river banks.

Gums render hospitality to brilliant birds, native creatures and mistletoe.

Stunning sunsets blaze farewell to the day.

The rising moon’s enormous orb inspires wonder.

Brilliant stars shower the heavens.

But this land of contrasts can also cry in agony.

The stark, dry landscape pleads for rain.

Drought is a matter of life and death and a meaningful gift is a semi, laden with hay.

Bushfires rage mercilessly, leaving, in their wake, heart-breaking losses.

Green forests become blackened stumps.

Courageous people sacrificially risk their lives.

Floods wash away a life’s work.

But hearts respond.

Mates reach out in the aftermath.

A cry for help reaps a passionate outpouring of generosity, and even in adversity the landscape of the heart is Hope Peace Freedom Mateship Strangers becoming brothers A community united Profound courage Gratitude Sacrifice Joy

Peter Langston

Liz Priestley

300 ft

Flagstaff 2019 Encaustic and oil on board 125 x 100 cm

Dirty grey whispers are brushing wet promises on the outstretched fingers of Flagstaff Mountain.

They pass by, between leaves sharing secrets and raindrop presents.

Gifts left to grow fat and roll from stem, to tip, rest there, until fully pregnant, they drop to stones leached of character by a million summers; to thirsty soil crushed under boot, hoof and the light tread of Dreamtime flesh pads; to mature grasses and vindictive invaders spiteful with thorns and adaptation; all eager to accept such generous gifts rarely offered.

Unaware, 300 feet below, we squeeze and waste whatever drops remain, delighted and extravagant, excess now expectation and pine for sunshine.

On Flagstaff Mountain, the clouds are crying.

Sharon Gilmour

Yvonne Ledingham

Land lines (detail) 2019 Watercolour, gouache, chinagraph pencils, photography and digital media 640 x 840 cm

Layers now and then

Did the crater-like water holes spawn the rounded hills in aeons past? Like Mother Earth’s bosom these curvy forms sheltered many & hold secrets from when the land was fenceless, shedless and stockless, when people laughed & feasted here.

Each rock stratum and landmark gumtree archive stories of ancient folk, fauna and flora. Drought and fire strips raw the earth’s flesh, revealing traces and tracks on this scratched and scarred land from the Dreamtime to the now time.

Dusty bones, choked trees, brittle grass and dry gullies.

From the forest floor the smallest creatures gaze skyward through the tangle of leaves, vines, falling bark, spiderwebs & tree trunks.

Bigger bush creatures endure the long dry wait too.

Where are the full hearts and the paddocks full of crops and stock? ..................

Rain falls. Tensions are released.

At eye level layers of native trees emerge, blurring in a misty silver background and recede beneath the canopy of the universe. Filmy gossamer green backdrops, freshly watered, advance. The landscape leaps to life. Birds flit between breeze-swept branches in the foreground. Emerald leaves adorn blackened branches. The waterhole fills.

The big wait is over

Yve Louis

Leah Bullen

. . . how many ways – Armidale 2015/2019

Echo (bloom) 2019 Silkscreen watercolour monotype 28 x 28 cm

1

Green— and the first morning of the world one more time: one more time all these given life-giving greens dark-clotted in branches of the pines air-brushed over grevilleas and wattles lacquered and lambent leafing the camellias

. . . nascent in red-tip-shine-beforethe-smoky-green-hazesky-reach of the stringybark . . .

Here in my garden two worlds, two hemispheres of fragrance and light.

Distance and time made scent and sight.

Even through night’s dark of the moon green was but a turning of the light, a remembered vibration behind closed eyes— the world’s dream waiting to be dreamed again.

Green . . .

2

Angus Nivison

Sophie Masson

But in the Dry 2019 Acrylic on canvas 110 x 100 cm

Sky Dramas, New England

In this quiet, secret land Of haunted shades and bony hills It’s the bold flashy sky that shouts out The most dramas.

Ladies and gentlemen, See the offerings on Skyflix, A packed program of genres: Daily showings of sunrise, sunset Blue and gold days Black velvet nights pinned and needled with stars.

Extravagant dramas Of quarrelsome bird kingdoms Games of feathered thrones In swaggering jewelled dress.

Musical productions With beaked lounge-suit entertainers In glorious voice And predatory glare.

Battlefield dramas Starring fleets of butterflies Flights of honey bees Mosquito snipers Squadrons of flies And guerrilla bands of wasps.

But in the Dry The program turns to crime drama Day after day Week after week Month after month Only one program Bright pitiless killer sky Baking the suffering secret land In a crackling harsh pelt of dead grass, Stilling bird kingdoms and insect battlegrounds Silencing musical choruses….

And here come scenes ripped out of the headlines: Empty dams like empty graves, Palls of smoke from distant fires Helicopters swinging buckets Sunsets redder than blood.

Sky is no longer our delight No longer our entertainment— It’s turned on us, Become our adversary, Taunting us with red-herring clouds Hinting at a satisfying solution When thunder proposes a new episode: Just an anticlimax.

This is a long-running series: Who knows when it will end?

Lucy Munro

Turning in Time

In the footsteps of another, I walk these paddocks, I circle these trees.

All the while pondering the question: who else has been here before me?

Four seasons I have lived in the pocket of this valley, watching the landscape turn from bottle green to mustard, tobacco grey to cracked, exposed dirt.

I’ve marvelled at the cloaked horizon of trees ablaze with fire, and trudged breathlessly through fields of frost covered earth.

It was late on an autumn day the first time we arrived here.

My heart felt immediately at home.

I dashed madly about the garden, weaving amongst abandoned sheds, rusty wire fences and the old towering pin oak, to and fro.

My insides ached to know the face, to trace the hands and learn the story of the person who had moulded this place so tenderly long ago.

Now, perched beneath the dappled shadows of a red gum, I look from a hilltop down onto my home below, and feel within me, that in fact, I have learned to know.

The patchwork patterns laid out below me are the history of what has been; and – a breath of excitement catches within me at this – are also the map of what might someday be.

Liz Powell

Patchwork Gates 2019 Recycled copper pipe, steel wire, handmade and oriental paper, etching, encaustic, stitch, collage, copper shim and mesh 57h x 65w x 55d cm

Jan Clark

Bronwyn Parry

Forest Floor: The Grandmother Tree 2019 Cotton and organza printed and hand dyed 106 x 75 cm

The Grandmother Tree

A hundred years, maybe more, she has stood tall, her boughs thick with time, her great trunk now shaded by her daughters and granddaughters. Her branches reach high to the sun and the breeze and the rain. The grooves of her thick textured bark trace whirls and swirls up and around, papery in the dry, or spongy with misty rain.

Bees and wasps feast on the sweetness of her blossoms. Birds – wrens and rosellas, magpies and choughs – rest and roost and nest in her crown of leaves. Possums, koalas and sugar gliders, roam her branches, and sometimes a quoll wanders through and hunts.

The long dry tests her, roots creeping out just under the surface, seeking moisture. Her leaves thin, dropping to the ground. In the soil beneath her, fallen foliage give sustenance to a thousand tiny life-forms, too small to see, making skeletons of her leaves.

Even when the sap stops flowing through her veins she will be home to multitudes of insects, birds, lichens, moss, microbes. And as her dying bones feed them, she will return in a billion tiny pieces to the soil from where she began.

Bernard Alberecht

Helena Pastor

Dwindlestone 2019 Digital photograph 73 x 53 cm

Dwindlestone

The name evokes a magical, mystical place, where witches hover over bubbling cauldrons, casting spells on unsuspecting victims. Trickling water, seeping rock walls, moonlight and smoke. In truth, Dwindlestone is a refuge, a dirt road leading to a bush shack, a river that ebbs and flows. A place of isolation and companionship, of candles and conversation, of tears and laughter and love.

Dwindlestone was named for the river that pushes against granite boulders, stone dwindling to sand. Gather by the river to test your courage and skills. Jump off the highest rock, see if you can touch the bottom. Paddle upstream to the shady area where the dogs won’t swim. Make paella on a fire on the riverbank and run up to the shack when the storm comes (as it always does when we make paella), our hair and clothes drenched with sudden rain.

But those days are long over. Perhaps a witch really has cast a spell because the river has stopped flowing, trees and lichen and moss are dying, and turtles poke their heads out of stagnant pools – Please help us! Do something!

Oh, Dwindlestone … may it rain and rain and rain upon you soon.

Nancy Hunt

Virginia Tapscott

Congestion 2019 Acrylic on canvas 110 x 76 cm

Koiwon tanan ba (as the rain approaches)

The rain is coming. The smell of wet earth is moving in the trees and climbing through windows and drifting down hallways. The growling grows and light retreats.

Wind hushes and promises a storm, long arms reaching out and whipping up the dust. Heavy air rushes about, slamming doors and then silence. One drop, two drops. And then the rain is heaving down on the old tin roof, surging and lashing the homestead.

Drowning out the sound of hooves furiously beating the ground, the horses running hard and ghostlike in the storm. Tails up, the whites of their eyes flashing against a black sky. They buck for the joy of water soaking into their dull coats. They race the sheets of rain that drive into the yawning cracked earth, breaking the crusty old back of the dry until his grip slips away. And knelt beside the muddied bones is a figure with face turned skyward. A soul bound to this patch of dirt through the torment and the triumph.

Michael Thorley

Rowen Matthews

Terrible Billy*

Terrible Billy 2019 Oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm

Terrible Billy whirled wrath through rock, erupting in birth.

Life from lava’s rolling rage, cooled to aeons of grey age.

Long lived, my grandfather loved his verandah view, looked out, tending traps of memory, across to brother Billy.

Storms in summer swept hot nights: first, far lightning flickering, grumbles, growing with each flash; night slashed – then cowering crash.

Stubborn, he’d sit, relishing Billy’s face flaring, waking; rapt with lightning, loving strife, comrades, charged again, like life.

*Terrible Billy is an old volcanic mountain looking down on Werris Creek.

Gabi Briggs

Nate Weatherall

and in response, I urge you to read 2019 Installation 900 x 240 cm

Where did it go where did it go where did the water go? look around you can see where it was and where it’s been some for the animals some the trees some for you and some for me it’s been on this earth since the days of first Let the water flow let the water flow free Water is life that’s what they tell me But they wanna take it all for the money and the greed they wanna take it all for the foreign cattle and the foreign seed but they don’t realise the land where we live got everything we need They wanna decimate the land at high speed for Proceeds of big profit Water is the topic from stolen property while the rightful owners live in poverty You got farmlands but where is my homeland my peace and serenity when I need to get away from all the negative energy.

Fay Porter

Suzie Wicks

“I see a land chewed down to the quick” 2019 Charcoal, conte crayon, shellac on Arches rives paper 113 x 56 cm

Dust in my eye

I squint through slitted eyes as all shimmers around me, everything shrinks in the unrelenting glare of the ‘I told you so’ sun. To the west an angry storm brews, full of deceit and apocalyptic fury

The storm on the distant plains screams silently with pent up dusty rage, not raindrops. I squint again, a speck of dust, loosened by the western nibblers, catches in my throat

The bucolic lens has lifted. I see a land chewed down to the quick, gnawed at, bony hides totter on unsteady sticks as they nibble at the edges of the parched rocks and dirt, til it’s raw

I gasp for air as the dust storm swirls within and without, I choke and inhale more gritted rage. Black cockatoos fly east, escaping the storm with a chorus of rusted farm-gate irony, barbed humour

I see weathered white skeleton trees, limbs outstretched in perpetual surrender A distant hill outlined with stubbled headstones to a mysterious death

An unwelcome guest, it finds its way through window cracks and door jambs and settles, a false truce, on every knick knack, in the vents of the telly, on every cup

A whistling kite glides above, wings up, eyes down, in ever decreasing circles, downgraded hunter, now forced to scavenge on the rural fringe, for a hapless backyard rabbit

Another dusty envoy seeking vengeance from the west. It lands in my eye and the tears well.

For myself and all around me. The only water is mine and it doesn’t reach the ground

Biographies

Bernard Alberecht (ARMIDALE) is a photographer who specialises in landscape and environmental portraiture, with a preference for medium and large format film in black and white. Bernard is inspired by the diversity in ecosystems in the New England region. His work has been shown nationally.

Nicole Alexander (MOREE) is the author of nine novels including the recently released Stone Country, and poetry, travel and genealogy articles which have been published internationally. Nicole has a Masters in Literature and Creative Writing.

Anne Bell (GUNNEDAH) has published widely in journals and anthologies in Australia, U.K and U.S.A. She began contributing to The School Magazine (Dept. Education) when her children were in primary school - a happy association which continues. Her achievements include the Henry Lawson Award for Verse (twice) and a commission for the text of Corrugations, an artists’ book with linocuts by Katie Clemson.

Gabi Briggs (ARMIDALE) is a sovereign Ambeyang and Gumbangier gedyura (woman) who works in various mediums such as performance, video, projection, sound and installation where she explores power, privilege, decolonisation and notions of sovereignty.

Leah Bullen (ARMIDALE) completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons) and a Ph.D. at the School of Art and Design, Australian National University. Her work is held in collections including Artbank, the ACT Legislative Assembly, regional galleries and university collections. She was awarded the Jasco Studio Scholarship (2016) and the Art Gallery of New South Wales Trustees’ Watercolour Prize (2016).

Michael Burge (DEEPWATER) is a journalist, artist, author, designer, digital publisher and mentor of writers and artists whose non-fiction work Questionable Deeds: Making a stand for equal love lifted the lid on familial, institutional and government homophobia in Australia. Widely published as a journalist on LGBTIQ and artistic topics, he is also co-producer of the High Country Writers Festival, an initiative of The Makers Shed in Glen Innes.

Peter Champion (INVERELL) holds a Diploma in Art Education from the National Art School and Alexander Mackie College 1969-1973. He has shown at the Armidale Art Gallery, and won numerous awards in art prizes across the New England including Armidale, Barraba, Bendemeer, Gunnedah and Inverell.

Jan Clark (ROCKY RIVER) has been a textile artist and teacher of textile techniques for the past twenty years, including two years living in Oregon in the USA. Her textiles, which push the edges of possibility in the fusion of art with textile, express commitment to Australian flora and fauna. Jan has a degree in Natural History Illustration and the discipline of detailed scientific drawing informs her current work.

Esther Gardiner (INVERELL) was born in Tingha, and is very proud of her Kamilaroi and Dunghutti heritage.

She completed a Bachelor of Arts at UNE in Armidale.

Esther has released two anthologies of her poetry and regularly reads her work at community events. She is passionate about sharing the wonderful things about her culture with the community.

Sharon Gilmour (WARIALDA) was raised in the Northern Rivers, studied art at tertiary level and has had the opportunity to exhibit, curate, mentor and teach, including Visual Arts at Warialda High School since 1996. As a working mother and farmer experiencing one of the worst natural disasters of the eastern seaboard and beyond, she is honoured to reflect on this historic drought John Heffernan (WALCHA) has published over 50 books for all ages from early readers to young adults, in a range of genre that includes realistic fiction, fantasy, futuristic, and picture books. His titles have won numerous awards, both domestic and international.

E.A. (Lizzie) Horne (ARMIDALE) is a poet, printmaker and children’s author whose work has been widely published and broadcast in Australia and the UK. Her poetic sequence “Kangaroos in my blood” (Kangaroos in my blood and other poems, Douglas & Brown, 2016) was the subject of the 2016/17 exhibition of the same name at NERAM, featuring the work of ten New England artists, including Lizzie herself.

Michelle Hungerford (TAMWORTH) is a fulltime working artist who is predominately a painter of the landscape. A graduate of the University of Newcastle with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) and the University Medal, she has exhibited internationally in Cambridge and in Berlin, and widely in regional and commercial galleries in Australia. In 2018 Michelle won the Defiance Gallery Award, Paddington Art Show.

Nancy Hunt (NARRABRI) is a mixed media artist, painter and sculptor. She has won a number of awards including Dunedoo Art Unlimited Art Prize, The Armidale Art Prize, The Fisher’s Ghost Contemporary Art Prize (Campbelltown) & Sydney RAS. She has held a number of solo exhibitions including at Moree, Gunnedah, and Roma. Her work is included in many private and public collections.

Paula Jenkins (WALCHA) lives in an area that abounds with spectacular subjects in nature which provides her with inspiration. Her distinct style depicts the essence of Australia’s landscapes using a range of media, predominately oils and gouache.

Her landscapes and compositions are known for their bold use of colour, textures and mark-making.

Maree Kelly (CURLEWIS) runs her own graphic and web design company in Gunnedah and has an art studio based at the family farm. With qualifications in both environmental science and art, she graduated from Newcastle University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2000, after having worked as a teacher in Arts & Media at TAFE New England at Tamworth and Gunnedah.

Heather Kerridge (INVERELL) began writing little stories at the age of eight years, for sheer pleasure.

Her first published book in 2007 was ‘But What Can I Say?: Ways to help bereaved parents’. The author of three further books, she finds writing therapeutic, a challenge and profoundly rewarding.

Yvonne Ledingham (WARIALDA) has taught in Sydney and Warialda following her studies in History, English and Drama at the University of NSW. She has been working as a papermaking artist for over 40 years and had her first solo exhibition at Ceramic Break Sculpture Park in 2019 Peter Langston (TAMWORTH) taught in primary schools for twenty years, before concentrating on writing full time since 2001. He has published four volumes of poetry - Six Nines (2009), Head Full of Whispers (2012), Straightening My Tie (2015) and While I wasn’t Looking (2017) and his first play, Geoffrey, was bought to the stage by the Tamworth Dramatic Society in March 2017.

Yve Louis (ARMIDALE) is a scriptwriter, copywriter and playwright/director whose first collection Lilith’s Mirror was published by Kardoorair Press in 1999.

Five more books have followed, including the prizewinning collection A Door in the Forest (2013 Society of Women Writers). Her most recent collection is on the Ways of Green.

Sophie Masson (INVERGOWRIE) was born in Indonesia of French parents and is the awardwinning author of over 60 books for children, young adults and adults, the latest being War and Resistance, There’s a Tiger Out There and On my Way, all published in 2019. She is a founding partner and publishing director of New England-based children’s publisher Christmas Press, and current Chair of the New England Writers’ Centre. She has recently completed a PhD at the University of New England, and in 2019 received an AM in the Order of Australia honours, for significant service to literature.

Rowen Matthews (PINE RIDGE) has been awarded the Calleen Art Prize and the Blackheath Art Prize and has exhibited widely. His next solo museum show will be at Tamworth Regional Gallery in 2020. He is represented by Day Art where he has held two recent solo shows; Nocturne in 2017, and Vertical Land in 2019. Rowen holds two Masters degrees in Visual Art and in Education,and a PhD in Art Practice.

Elizabeth Munro (MOREE) is a proud Goomeroi woman. She grew up on the Mehi Mission, which were some of the best days of her life. She started her new journey in life through art by attending art classes at Moree TAFE, a healing process for her because of the losses she has been through. Elizabeth loves to create artwork around her life, stories she has been told, and Mother Earth.

Lucy Munro (GLEN INNES) is a freelance writer and assistant editor of The Planthunter. Deeply affected by the landscape of rural Australia—its colours and changing patterns—and the stories of the people who live there, she has a background in horticulture and an Honours degree from UNSW in textiles and graphic design. Currently she is studying for her Master of Arts in Writing at the University of New England.

Angus Nivison (WALCHA) is represented by Utopia Art Sydney. He attended National Art School 1972-74 and Alexander Mackie College in 1975.

Nivison has exhibited regularly since 1982 and has been awarded numerous prizes including the 2002 Wynne prize for landscape painting at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Eutick Memorial Still Life Award (EMSLA) at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery (2011). In 2012, Tamworth Regional Gallery curated a survey exhibition of Nivison’s work, which also travelled to Newcastle University Art Gallery and the S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney.

Bronwyn Parry (EBOR) has written six romantic thrillers set in outback Australia and has won the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart Award, the Australian Romance Readers award for Favourite Romantic Suspense (three times). With her latest book, The Clothier’s Daughter, in part inspired by her Honours thesis research on British worsted textiles, Bronwyn turns her pen to weave a story of intrigue, drama and passion. When she’s not working at her keyboard, she enjoys researching and making historical clothing, and she’s a skilled spinner, weaver, seamstress and knitter.

Helena Pastor (ARMIDALE) is the author of Wild Boys: A Parent’s Story of Tough Love. She has completed two Australian Society of Authors’ Mentorships, along with residencies at Varuna Writers’ House, Bundanon, and Booranga and KSP Writers’ Centres. She is also a songwriter and lyricist and loves to spend time in nature.

Fay Porter (URALLA) trained at the National Art School and has been a practising artist for over 25 years.

She has also worked in publishing and art direction, and taught art at different levels. With an extensive record of exhibiting, Porter’s work has been acquired by a number of public collections.

Liz Powell (TENTERFIELD) has been an artist and art educator for over 40 years, exhibiting and teaching workshops around Australia and overseas. She majored in sculpture and drawing at the National Art School in Sydney but has extended her practice through quilt making, embroidery, paper making, book binding, etching, painting and metal working, to include fibre and textiles, printmaking, plant fibre paper and artists’ books.

Max Powell (GLEN INNES) worked for 34 years as a visual arts and ceramics teacher at TAFE and St Josephs Secondary School, Glen Innes, following on from painting, ceramics and art education studies at the National Art School and Monash University. He is now focussed on making ceramics for exhibition and sale and continues his involvement with public and community art projects.

Liz Priestley (MANILLA) is a predominantly self-taught artist, having taken short courses through TAFE Julian Ashton College. She exhibits widely in solo and group shows and holds art workshops both privately at her studio and by invitation for art organisations.

Virginia Tapscott (NARRABRI) studied journalism at the University of Queensland and became a reporter with the ABC rural department based in Mount Isa. After two years she moved home to Narrabri and became sub editor with the local newspaper.

She now writes freelance, mostly for RM Williams Outback Magazine but also for national Australian and overseas publications.

Michael Thorley (TAMWORTH) has had a lifelong love of poetry. His work Sleeping Alone won the Canberra Writers award for best poetry book in 2008. His interest in Japanese poetry – Haiku and Tanka – has led to publication in the Australian collections “Eucalypt” (Tanka) and “Windfall” (Haiku). Following study at the University of Sydney, taught in the Riverina and South Coast Regions before retiring in 2006.

Nate Weatherall (ARMIDALE) is a proud Gumbaynggirr and Gamilaroi Koori, hip hop artist and producer. A self-taught musician, he is a member of Armidale hip hop crew Koorified with 12 years of experience creating and working digitally with music. He is founder of Mad Proppa Deadly, a mobile digital music education hub Jo White (MOREE) held her first solo exhibition at Michael Reid Murrurundi in 2017 and has exhibited at both Sydney and Melbourne’s The Other Art Fair in 2016 and 2017 and at The Moree Gallery and Broken Hill Regional Gallery. Jo’s latest solo exhibitions was Fibre of Being at New England Regional Art Museum for Michael Reid.

Suzie Wicks (URALLA) works across animation, video, radio, photography and theatre. An Awgie Award-winning scriptwriter, her radio drama, The Hum, was commissioned and produced for Radio National and her short film, The Word, won Australian and international film festival awards. Her boutique digital story agency is Fatmoon Studios and she has run digital story training at University of Technology Sydney and with the UN.

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