Frith’s discovery of art began about the same time as she was discovering the wonders of nature.

“When I was in Year 2, I sat next to a girl who could draw horses like no one else. One day she said ‘I’m going to be an artist’ and that was the first time I realised there was such a thing as an artist.” This knowledge, combined with compliments from her art teacher, caused young Louise starting to think seriously about art.

By the time she was in high school, Frith was creating portfolios of her work, accompanied with notes and observations, even though this wasn’t a requirement of the course at that time. She remembers the “visual excitement” of being introduced to Edvard Munch and the Symbolists in Year 10 and says she was fortunate to have a very good art teacher who arranged for her students to do life drawing classes after school.

Frith enrolled to study environmental science after high school, but when she learned that a friend was going to develop her drawing skills at TAFE, she decided to take a similar path. Frith was accepted into Meadowbank TAFE and studied there for two years, majoring in photography and sculpture and completing an Associate Diploma in Fine Arts.

She then travelled in Europe for three months and, when she returned, worked for a picture framing business in Crows Nest owned by the legendary Australian actress, Ruth Cracknell, and her husband, Eric.

In 1995, Frith and her partner Luke went to London. They stayed for 15 months and while there Frith attended a course in botanical drawing at Kew Gardens, drew the dahlias in Holland Park and would frequently take her sketch book to the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. When she returned home, she worked for the Cracknells again before joining the Goodmans auction house for several years.

There wasn’t much time for her art while Louise and Luke raised young children, but she signed up for several summer schools at the National Art School, including with Suzanne Archer. When her youngest child went to pre-school, Frith enrolled in Jo Bertini’s courses at Willoughby Arts Centre and this proved crucial for her confidence.

“Jo said to me: “You can do this.” It was the right time for me and she was the right person at that time.”

Frith continued to develop her practice, attending workshops with Robert Malherbe, Lucy Culliton and Tim Allen, but she had not yet exhibited her paintings.

“It is so different now with social media and what you can do. Through my 20s, I didn’t feel like there was any chance I was going to show somewhere. I was casting around, but I didn’t really have a clear idea what I was making. Jo Bertini helped crystallise things but Luke was the one who said I needed a studio.”

Frith successfully applied for a space owned by the council above Northbridge library and “things really started to happen. I stopped thinking about what I should be doing and thought about that quote from Matisse: ‘You’ve got to do 500 paintings before you do a good one.’ So it was paint, paint, paint, paint, paint.”

She shared the Northbridge studio with two other artists, Jane Guthleben and Peter Finlay, and their group exhibition at Willoughby Arts Centre was Frith’s first public show. Frith then exhibited with her friend, Fiona Smith, at Ewart Gallery in 2018 and White Rhino in 2019. 

Increasingly, friends urged her to post her work on Instagram. Frith followed this advice, and soon afterwards she was contacted by Amber Creswell Bell, who is Director, Emerging Art for the Michael Reid galleries. Creswell Bell invited Frith to join Melanie Waugh and Emily Gordon in a show in late 2019 and then The Country Interior group exhibition, a collaboration with Country Style magazine at Michael Reid Murrurundi in March 2020. 

Over the past four years, Frith has exhibited regularly across Michael Reid’s Murrurundi, Northern Beaches and Southern Highlands galleries and she was thrilled to be part of Murrurundi’s presence at Sydney Contemporary in 2022.

Frith’s latest exhibition continues to reveal her experience in the landscape, but she “wants to draw people’s focus into the detail. Most people walk into the landscape and they’ll look around and see the broader view but this is also about drawing them in. I’m inviting them to have a closer look.”

Most of the paintings are of scenes in North Head, which is a continual source of inspiration for Frith. “I go there about once a month to see how it’s transformed, because every time I go it’s different. In June, all the wattle is out and in November the flannel flowers are out and right now it’s just incredible.”

She has loved Australian native flowers since her childhood growing up by Little Blue Gum Creek and the flannel flowers that grew in Lane Cove National Park were a favourite of her mother and one of the first plants young Louise could identify.

The entrance to Frith’s home boasts a carefully curated garden which plays an important part in her daily routine.

“Before I start painting every morning, I potter around in there because it transports me to a different place in my head. It breaks the over-thinking part of me and puts me in a more relaxed state before I go into the studio and get to work.”

This work involves Frith’s time-consuming technique.

“When I’m painting a flannel flower, for example, I paint the flower and then I cut in with the paint all around that flower. I don’t paint a background layer and then paint the flannel flower on top. It’s just the way my painting has developed.” 

She also employs the “limited palette” technique she learned from a master class with Elisabeth Cummings a decade ago.

“It is where you take a select number of colours and you only use those,” Frith explains. “For me, that helps to produce a more cohesive painting.”

Frith used to work in the corner of the family kitchen, but in 2022 she moved to a studio in the backyard. “That has been an absolute game-changer,” she says, “not having people interrupt me – and the space!”

She has progressively established herself since her first group show five years ago and is enjoying her artistic journey.

“I have always treated it as a ride” she says. “I don’t really know where it’s going, so I’ll just keep on pedalling and see where it takes me.”

Jane was born in Wagga Wagga, where her energetic and entrepreneurial father ran an antiques business known as The Junque Shop. Athol Salter sourced his stock by travelling around the countryside, buying bargains at clearance sales and auctions. He had grown up in regional Victoria and, after excelling at David Jones’ Young Executive course, opened a shop selling curtains. He placed antique furniture in the shop to add ambience and soon found the furniture sold better than the curtains.

“That was the turning point and Athol decided he wanted to sell antiques,” explains Jane.

Following a suggestion from a friend, Athol decided to hold an auction in Canberra. “It went off like a frog in a sock and Dad realised he needed to be in that market.”

So Athol Salter opened a new antiques business in the old theatre in Hall, taking his wife Margrett and young family with him.

“We lived not far from the shop,” says Jane. “Mum and Dad were awarded the tender for the historic Ginninderra Village schoolhouse, built in 1883. It sat on about five acres of land and Athol had the idea to turn it into a tourist attraction, like a historic village. It was like a mini-Sovereign Hill.” 

Jane fondly remembers her “amazing” childhood, full of adventures.

“We built our own house and there was a paddock with sheep, Joe the goat, a donkey, a pony, chooks and ducks and all these animals would cause chaos. On Saturdays, I would knock on the door of the restaurant and the chef would give me two bits of white bread with a roast potato in the middle of it, dripping butter, and that was my lunch.”

Athol first visited the UK to buy antiques in 1974 and was soon travelling there six times a year, buying from dealers set up in vast warehouses along the Thames.

“He was always thinking outside the square. At that time, lamb exports to England were huge and there were a lot of refrigerated containers coming back to Australia empty. Dad negotiated cheap shipping by packing antiques into what would otherwise have been empty containers.”

Jane enjoyed school and all the opportunities it offered her. She went to a small primary school in the Canberra suburb of Lyneham and when her older brother was sent off to high school, she insisted she should also go to boarding school. From the age of nine she was a boarder, first at Gib Gate and then at Frensham, both in Mittagong. After school, she completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at University of Canberra. The primary focus was Communications but she “tacked on” law subjects as well as marketing and public relations. These additional courses would prove invaluable in her future career.

Jane loved studying Drama at school and dreamed of working in theatre, so after University she travelled to Melbourne “and just knocked on doors”. She found some unpaid work experience at Victorian Opera but her dream didn’t pan out as expected and she moved to Sydney to work for the MindBodySpirit Festival and then a series of office jobs.

At the same time, she was organising garage sales and continuing to liaise with her father about antiques. She had met her future husband, Bob Crowley, and “he was the one who said I was mad to work in office jobs when I could be working with my Dad, doing what I love”.

In 2000, Bob and Jane decided to spend time in the United Kingdom and this experience confirmed her passion for the antiques business.

“Athol said to me: ‘While you’re over there why don’t you buy a container, fill it with furniture and send it out.’ It was like this light turned on. I bought myself an old British Gas van, a Ford, called it Daisy and drove to auctions all around the UK. The learning curve was off the charts. I would store the furniture in a little stable at the back of the house we were renting in the village of Falfield and when I had enough to fill a container I would send it to Athol.”

After three years in the UK, Bob and Jane – now with two young children – were ready to come home. They moved into an old house that Athol was renovating in The Southern Highlands and Jane started working with her father. Athol had sold Antiques Hall 14 years earlier and was now operating The Shed in Mittagong. 

Three years later, in 2008, Athol and Jane decided to make a significant change.

“The Shed was freezing in winter and like an oven in summer. I believed we had reached our potential, so when the front shop at the Acre became available we took it. Back then it was the old Electricity Commission building. The zoning had recently been changed from industrial to retail and Athol saw the opportunity to open an antiques market. The site was a complete mess, but we negotiated a rent. I think the real estate agent thought we were insane.”

Dirty Janes opened with just eight dealers but “word got out quickly and six months later the hall was full”.

Why did they call their new business Dirty Janes?

“It really has nothing to do with me,” Jane says convincingly. “We wanted a name that was easy to remember and also had a back story. That’s when we learned about this convict girl.”

Jane Dumphrey was born in Northern Ireland, the daughter of a “rag and bone” man. She started working for him when she was five years old. Both her parents had died by the time she turned 15 and she moved to a poorhouse in Belfast. She found a good job working as a maid but her boyfriend convinced her to steal some silver and Dumphrey was transported to Sydney in 1840. After impressing the captain and his wife on the journey,  Jane was referred to the captain’s cousin, Tom Gully, who owned the general store in Gundagai. When she arrived covered in dust and mud, her new boss called her “Dirty Jane”. The convict girl worked hard and when Gully died decades later he left the business to her.

For Athol and Jane, community is at the core of Dirty Janes.

“Having a shop in the main street of any town is not only expensive, it can be really lonely. All the decisions fall to you and you have to be an expert at everything. We wanted to provide support so people could look to us to manage the back end of the business while they focus on the creative stuff. I think that has become our North Star and our stall holders really appreciate it. We do the marketing, sell their stock, arrange delivery and they know they will be paid at the end of the week.”

Dirty Janes started well but the building was under a demolition order which meant they could be evicted with six months’ notice. After five years, the Government decided to sell the building and a developer was rumoured to have plans to turn the site into a mall. Jane and Bob quickly put together a business case and borrowed as much money as they could. They lodged their offer, together with a bank cheque for a 10% deposit, just before the 5pm Friday deadline. 

“I still remember the real estate agent calling me at about 5.30pm telling me that we’d got it. It was fantastic – but we now had this enormous mortgage. We ran the business on a shoestring. Athol would bring in the dealers and I was the accountant, the marketer, the office manager – I was doing absolutely everything. And I had three kids under the age of six!”

By 2016, Dirty Janes was a Southern Highlands icon with ninety stallholders. In 2018, Athol and Jane decided to expand to Canberra. They spent most of 2019 putting the plans together.

“In January 2020 we went to Canberra for three months to do the final renovations. We opened on 20 March with 90 stall holders – and the country went into lockdown on 25 March. The timing was just crap.

“We thought at first, delusionally, that we could carry on. But we couldn’t, of course, and we closed Canberra. Then we closed Bowral. We had to lay off about 20 staff but we told the stall holders we wouldn’t charge rent while we were closed. So our income dried up, literally overnight. I went home and just wanted to dig a hole in the garden and bury myself. I was cross with myself because I felt I should have seen it coming and I was stumbling, like so many of us were.”

Dirty Janes reopened three months later “and trade took off, although we still had to deal with significant challenges like social distancing”.

When the second lockdown was implemented, Jane and her team were much better prepared.  They had improved their social media skills and enhanced their online presence while also introducing a “click and collect” type service. 

They were difficult times, but what about the current economic environment?

“I’ve traded through the GFC, recession and COVID but it is really tough out there at the moment,” Jane says. “People are hurting. 

“There is a lot of uncertainty and whenever that happens there is a tendency to save instead of spend. Big purchases are few and far between, but people still want to treat themselves. It’s so important that we provide one of the best experiences you can have in a retail environment. Our staff are trained to interact with our customers, to greet them and, for example, tell them they can bring their dog in. This really reverberates with our customers.”

The tough trading environment highlights the importance of being agile.

“You cannot afford to sit still,” Jane says. “You have to be constantly looking at what is going on in your community, and the broader community, and you have to be innovative.”

This approach is epitomised by the opening of a third Dirty Janes in Orange earlier this year. They now look after about 200 small businesses across three locations and employ about 50 staff.

Jane stresses that each Dirty Janes must have its own character, connecting with its community. She understands the convenience of shopping online but is passionate about the importance of supporting local businesses.

“It’s up to every single person to hold on to the small local businesses in the regions. Franchises are expanding their reach and it’s getting to the point where you drive into a country town and you’re not really sure where you are – but you can see that franchise and the other franchise and the other one. 

“We have to hold on to the uniqueness of each regional area because that is the community, that’s where you anchor yourself. If we lose that, we’re losing community and that’s a really sad prospect.”

National Art School in Sydney was a huge change for this 17-year-old girl from Gleniffer – but Waugh relished the opportunity.

“I was like a sponge, absorbing everything. People talk about art school now and how they don’t learn how to draw or paint. My experience was the total opposite – I learnt the fundamentals of drawing and painting. 

“I had incredible teachers. The one who I think taught me the most about how to draw was David Serisier, an abstract painter from the New York school. There was also Euan Macleod, Wendy Sharpe, Aida Tomescu, Noel McKenna, Susan Archer, David Fairbairn – I learnt from so many amazing artists. It was a really cool time to be at art school.”

Despite Waugh’s love of art and the successful completion of her degree, “I still didn’t think I could do it commercially”. So after graduation she found a job with Parkers Art Supplies in The Rocks – and she worked there for about a decade.

“It was a great education, getting to know the materials and also other artists.”

In 2007 and 2008 Waugh completed a Master of Arts degree at the College of Fine Arts “and then I went totally AWOL. A friend invited me to go and work with her and her husband on a super yacht in The Caribbean. I decided I had to grab the opportunity and had an amazing time in a very beautiful part of the world.”

When she returned to Australia, Waugh successfully applied for an Artist in Residence program sponsored by the law firm Curwoods. This included free studio space in Sydney’s Australia Square and her exhibition at the end of the residency, titled Island, sold out.

Waugh continued to paint after the Curwoods residency, but she decided to become an art teacher to provide a regular source of income. She taught high school students during the day and adults in the evenings. She found a better studio in Summer Hill and began posting images of her work on Instagram. These paintings caught the eye of Amber Creswell Bell, Michael Reid’s Director, Emerging Art and Waugh was invited to participate in several group exhibitions. She also had a solo exhibition at Robin Gibson Gallery in Darlinghurst.

Her increasing success as an artist meant Waugh needed to consider her career options more closely.

“I was still teaching full time and I felt I wasn’t giving a full go to either teaching or painting. I had to make a decision, to choose either teaching or painting. And then COVID happened. 

“My mother passed away, not from COVID, but it was a horrible year and a really emotional time. I decided that life was too short, that I had to do this, I had to paint. Mum and dad had always supported me and told me to chase my dreams.”

Full circle

Waugh’s father had died a decade earlier, so after her mother’s passing she and her sister inherited the family property at Gleniffer. Waugh decided not only to focus on art full time but to move to her childhood home.

“My husband can work remotely so we moved back to the house and property I grew up in. Dad liked tennis and he spent hours each week maintaining a grass tennis court. He also built a tennis shed to keep all the tennis equipment in and we turned that shed into my studio.”

Being able to paint full time was a blessing.

“When I paint every day, my style is so much freer and looser. My brush strokes are more confident. I love that expressionistic style.” 

When she was at Art School, Waugh was most influenced by abstract artists such as Elisabeth Cummings and Ann Thomson “because that was what we were fed and I drank that Kool Aid. Also early Mondrian. Then I became interested in the Expressionists and Edvard Munch is probably my favourite painter. When I left Art School I was really into Figurative artists like Edward Hopper and David Hockney.”

Today she describes herself as an Expressionist landscape painter who works exclusively in oils.

Waugh was invited to present a solo exhibition, Beauty & Danger, at Michael Reid Northern Beaches in December 2021. The sell out success of this show led to her being selected to hold another solo show, Moonlight Studies, to open the new Michael Reid Southern Highlands gallery in March 2022. This was followed by The Stars Look Very Different Today at Michael Reid Murrurundi in July 2022 and Soft Summer at Michael Reid Northern Beaches in April 2024. During these years, Waugh also participated in a number of group shows and was part of the Michael Reid presence at the 2022 Sydney Contemporary Art Fair.

Just over a year ago, in March 2024, Waugh gave birth to her son Phoenix.

“It has changed my practice so much. I can’t believe I had all the time in the world before he came along and now I have to really hone in on the time I have. It makes me more efficient with my time in the studio. It’s a juggling act and my husband, Dan, has been amazing. When he finishes work at 5 o’clock, I hand Phoenix over and work in my studio until late. And I’ll often get up early and work before Dan starts at nine. I also do a lot of work in the studio on weekends.”

Apart from time, has the arrival of Phoenix had any other impact on her painting?

“I think my palette is a bit softer and a friend told me that she thinks my painting as whole is softer. I certainly didn’t mean to do that.”

High Country

Waugh’s current exhibition at Michael Reid Southern Highlands is titled High Country.

“I like painting places that are familiar to me or special to me – places where I go to breathe. This time I have gone inland to a National Park called Cathedral Rock. It’s a beautiful landscape with volcanic rock that is two million years old. There are incredible compositions and shapes, like rock sculptures.

“I would like the audience to feel immersed in these paintings. Hopefully I’ve succeeded in doing this by not painting them from a vantage point in the distance but rather from right inside the landscape. I’m hoping the energy of the area is shown in the brush strokes.

“The end game for me is to use as few brush strokes as possible to create the scene.”

Waugh has achieved a huge amount in the four years since deciding to dedicate herself to art full time. This includes three solo shows in the past year since giving birth to Phoenix. Despite these achievements, and while she believes she is heading in the right direction with her practice, she feels the need to make up for lost time. She is driven to do more and “give it a red hot go”. Her future aims include working in a larger scale and travelling more widely in Australia.

“There are just so many landscapes to paint – we are truly spoilt for choices here.”

Cressida spent her early years in the Sydney beachside suburb of Manly until, when she was 10 years old, her parents bought a hobby farm in Mittagong. Portentously, the neighbouring property was a dairy. She enjoyed an “amazing childhood’, spending as much time as possible riding horses at historic Throsby Park. 

“I would stay in the old servants’ quarters with a bunch of girls and guys on weekends and in the holidays. There was no supervision and we had a lot of fun.”

After she finished school, Cressida completed a hospitality course in Sydney and later a business degree in Canberra. She then travelled overseas and when she returned to Australia she worked in the wine industry. This is where she met Michael, who had been born in Wollongong and studied at the University of Sydney.

The young couple bought a house in Leichardt where they “grew vegetables, had chooks in the backyard and dreamed of getting out of Sydney”.

Cressida and Michael took a step toward living this dream by buying a small property near Picton, about an hour’s drive south-west of Sydney. They planted a market garden and pecan trees and made butter from their “house cow”. Fascinated by the science of making cheese from milk, they bought some dairy goats “but they kept jumping fences and we decided they were not for us”.

Then, in 2005, they purchased six East Fresian ewes, renowned for the quality of their milk. The Cains milked their herd of half a dozen sheep daily and began making cheese.

“We knew we wanted to go into cheesemaking,” recalls Cressida. “We discovered that goats weren’t suitable for us and we liked the fact that sheep are much lighter on the land than cows – they eat and drink less and their milk is very nutrient dense and excellent for cheesemaking.”

Their experience in the wine industry also piqued their interest in cheesemaking.

“When I was working at Tyrrell’s, I saw that they made a number of lines of shiraz which were all different,” recalls Michael. “Each wine reflected the soil of its vineyard – sandy loam or basalt or chocolate – and was distinctively of its place. You could taste that. Both Cress and I developed a deep appreciation of the notion of terroir – that something tastes a certain way because it’s a reflection of its time and place and characteristics such as soil and temperature and climate; that food has the capacity to tell a story.”

In 2008 the Cains purchased about 200 acres of land near the Southern Highlands village of Robertson.

“The area around Robertson and Kangaloon is some of the oldest and best dairy country in Australia,” says Cressida, “and we also wanted proximity to market. A significant barrier for many small producers is the cost of transporting your product around Australia.”

It took about five years of research and development from their first milking in 2005 before they were ready to sell their cheese commercially.

“In 2010 we submitted our Jamberoo Mountain Blue to the Sydney Royal Cheese and Dairy Produce Show and it won a gold medal – so we knew we had a great product. We began commercial operations the following year with Jamberoo as well as [mould-ripened] Bloomy and our fresh curd, which shows the incredible sweetness and creaminess of our milk.”

From the outset, Cressida and Michael knew it was important to target “the top end of the market as a boutique brand”. They also wanted to produce a raw milk cheese, even though this was not permitted by the authorities at that time. What drove them to achieve that?

“Our property has some beautiful cool climate rainforest, which was originally called the Yarrawa brush, crystal clear creeks and we have lyre birds, echidnas, wallabies and a diverse variety of insects,” Cressida explains. “This is all part of the ecology of the property – the way the soil works, the way the pasture grows, the health of our animals and therefore the health of the milk. We wanted to express all of this in our cheese and the way to express that best is in a raw milk cheese because it incorporates all those macro and micro factors. It becomes an expression of the landscape on the plate. There is a direct link to time and place. This also means that each cheese is different – it’s a snapshot of our farm at a particular point in time.”

Michael explains why production of raw milk cheese was not permitted in Australia.

“The science of cheesemaking wasn’t understood as well as it is now, so it was just easier to require all milk to be pasteurised. A conventional cheese is made safe by the milk being pasteurised. A raw milk cheese is made safe through maturation, through the aging process, which is just as effective as pasteurisation. We know this now, but it took the industry a long time to understand that.”

In 2016, after extensive research, Food Standards Australia New Zealand changed the regulations to permit the production of raw milk cheese. Pecora Dairy then worked with the NSW Food Authority to become the first Australian operator licensed to make raw milk cheese.

First produced in 2018, Pecora’s award-winning raw milk cheese is named Yarrawa, after the Indigenous word for the local cool climate rainforest. They also produce a raw milk fetta.

Pecora’s path to winning this year’s President’s Medal involved a rigorous examination that included several site visits, searching interviews and a review of the business’s current financial position and also its long term strategy. The judges observed the extraordinary natural attributes of the property as well as the investment in solar panels and batteries.

It was also important that Pecora had contributed significantly to the local community, including Kiama Farmers Market and the establishment of Pecora Cheese & Wine in Robertson.

“Our business is so much more than making cheese,” observes Michael.

In the two decades since they purchased their first East Fresian ewes, the Cains have faced many challenges – and that doesn’t include raising two children. In the past five years alone, like so many others, they have had to navigate the natural disasters of drought, devastating bushfires and major floods as well as the substantial impact that COVID had on supply chains and markets.

“There have been some incredibly tough times, but everything that is worthwhile involves hard work and we have worked unbelievably hard,” says Cressida.

In their first year of commercial production, Pecora Dairy made about two tonnes of cheese. Today they run around 200 sheep and produce about 10 tonnes of cheese, selling directly to consumers through Pecora Wine & Cheese and a small number of specialty cheese shops, while also supplying selected restaurants through a distributor.

The Cains continue to study and learn and they remain passionate about working together to build Pecora Dairy’s future.

“It’s our life’s work,” says Cressida.

For further information visit pecoradairy.com.au

Emily in Oakland

Gordon performed well academically at school and was interested in art from a very young age. 

“When I was little, I wanted to be either an artist or an astronaut,” she recalls. “I was always doing after school art programs, weekend classes, summer camps, summer courses. In the way a lot of kids did sport, I did art.”

Her parents had an appreciation for the Arts, however they worked corporate desk jobs. “But Oakland is a creative and diverse community, so there were lots of good opportunities and options. Also, my friends’ parents tended to be creative people – artists, photographers, illustrators – so being in those homes was a way to engage in creativity.”

Gordon studied art at high school, and took courses on weekends and during holidays, but when it came time to select a university course she didn’t choose art.

“Basically, I chickened out,” she says honestly. “I told myself that I wouldn’t fit in, but I think it was really because I was convinced I didn’t have anything people would be interested in seeing. I thought art school was to prepare you to go straight into a museum and I didn’t think I had what it takes.”

Gordon decided to study History at Cornell University in New York State, with a focus on East Asia. Cornell offered its students the opportunity to spend a semester studying at the University of Sydney and Gordon decided to grasp that opportunity by the forelock.

The course was “fabulous” and one night she met a nice young man at a Sydney bar.

“Spoiler alert, he is now my husband,” Gordon says with a smile.

Emily in Australia

After graduating from Cornell, Gordon decided to emigrate to Australia which means “I’ve spent essentially my entire adult life here”.

How difficult was it to make this major, life-changing choice?

“I make big decisions easily and little decisions with a large amount of angst,” she responds with admirable self-awareness.

Feeling a bit adrift in her new country, Gordon enrolled in a marketing degree at Macquarie University because she thought it would help her find employment. She completed that degree in 2008 and discovered the Global Financial Crisis meant there were very few marketing jobs available. For the next few years she worked in real estate.

Gordon hadn’t practised her art much since leaving high school “because I was in University survival and fun mode” however she now started enrolling in community art classes. After Gordon’s second child was born, her mother encouraged her to get back into painting and offered to babysit while Emily did some more art courses.

Her confidence grew “and I came to the realisation that I could create and sell my art for a similar monetary outcome as working part-time in the roles that were available to me.

“I remember reading an issue of Country Style magazine and seeing these fantastic artists who were creating good work that had tremendous appeal and they were selling their work for money as a small business. That was their job. I thought: ‘How fantastic would that be?’ It was a light bulb moment – that you could be a working artist if you are making art that people connect with.

“So I made another big decision – I decided I was going to be an artist.”

Emily the artist

Gordon and her husband own a property at Gunning, a small town that lies between Goulburn and Yass in The Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, and she began painting landscapes in the area. She remembers looking at one of these works and being satisfied that “it had its own little voice”. This gave her the confidence to apply to a local winery that was seeking artists to exhibit there.

Her submission to the winery was accepted and the series of about a dozen landscapes sold well.

“The thing I was most proud of was that I sold some to collectors who were not friends or family or associates,” she recalls fondly. “They were local people who had seen my work on Instagram, came to the show and bought some paintings.” 

As it happens, one of those collectors knew Amber Creswell Bell, Director of Emerging Art for the Michael Reid galleries, and recommended that Creswell Bell have a look at Gordon’s work. Creswell Bell followed this recommendation “and that changed everything”.

While Creswell Bell admired Gordon’s landscapes, she asked her to focus on her more recent cityscapes and the subsequent 2019 exhibition “was a great experience and very successful”.

Emily in the city

Gordon moved to The Rocks in inner city Sydney in 2018 “and that’s when I started to look at this environment as subject matter. I have an interest in painting my personal narrative – painting where I find myself, painting the things I see in my daily life. I didn’t paint the city until I lived in the city. I find moments around me that are visually captivating – this vista, this corner, this alley. About 50% of the time it’s me going about my business and something catches my eye and the other 50% I go exploring to see if I can find something interesting, the seed of an idea. I’m looking for moments of light and of rhythm.”

Gordon always carries her smartphone with her to capture these moments.

“Over time I develop a library and I refer back to those images to think whether there is a painting there. Sometimes I take a photo and I know it’s going to be a painting. But other times I think there is something interesting there but I’m not sure what it is, so I save it and circle back later. For some of my paintings I might have taken the photo three or four years ago and I’ve looked at them many times until finally I say to myself: ‘I know how I can do this. I know what this composition needs, I know what the colour and the light needs to be to translate that moment into an artwork.’”

Most importantly, “there needs to be an engagement between a photo and what ends up on the board”.

While Gordon is inspired by the real scenes that surround her, whether cityscape or landscape, the key components of her work are less tangible.

“The things I am looking for in the composition are rhythm and light. If I’m happy with the rhythm and I’m happy with the light, then everything else falls into place.

“My current practice, and this does shift over time, is to begin with a loose sketch followed by a more composed sketch, just to spend some more time in that world, understanding the composition, understanding the proportions and making decisions about how to make it work as an artwork. Then I start work on the board with an underpainting, which is like a drawing in yellow ochre paint – and that’s where the real building happens, where decisions are made about what is in, what is out and what needs adjustment.

“The underpainting is critical for decision-making and once that’s down, it’s almost like a jigsaw. For example I don’t paint a blue sky and then a cloud on top. If there’s a cloud, I will paint the cloud and then the blue will go around it, or vice versa.”

Gordon has achieved significant success since she committed to being an artist six years ago, including selection as a finalist in the 2021 National Emerging Art Prize and selling out her past four shows at Michael Reid Northern Beaches and Michael Reid Southern Highlands. 

She is grateful to those who have guided and supported her and knows she still has much to achieve.

“You are always growing. I have a process but not a fixed approach. For every painting, I ask what does this painting need, what is special here and how can I bring that out visually,” she says with softly spoken intensity. “Giving each work its own approach opens up new ideas and gives me more options as I build my practice.”

Gordon’s latest exhibition is titled Higher Ground and, as always, it is important to her that the series works as a coherent narrative.

“The title refers to me revisiting places and memories in The Rocks, an area where I’ve been working pretty intensively for the past five years, trying to see familiar topics from a new perspective and also discovering new vistas that I hadn’t previously appreciated.”

Higher Ground opens at Michael Reid Southern Highlands on 2 May and runs until 2 June.

Steve was born near Aberystwyth in Wales while his parents were on their way home to London from a holiday in the Welsh seaside town of Temby. His father was English, but his maternal grandmother was a proud Welsh woman who wouldn’t speak English to her son-in-law because he was a Saxon outsider. Steve’s mother would have to translate all conversations between her mother and husband from Gaelic to English and vice versa. 

“My grandmother was absolutely delighted that I was born in Wales, not the UK,” he laughs.

Growing up in and around London, Steve had a love of art from an early age. He was influenced by his first art teacher, the aptly named John Constable, the local vicar who was also a painter as well as the genes on his mother’s side of the family.

“They were descended from Romany Gypsies and my uncle Larry, who worked in the Railways all his life, was a wonderful painter. He loved painting steam trains, which is actually very difficult.”

Steve studied Art for his A-levels and aspired to being an artist, much to the horror of his father who had a background in the Navy and then pharmaceuticals businesses. In 1968 Steve’s father decided the family should emigrate to South Africa and, while the teenage Steve hated the four years he spent there, it provided the opportunity for him to complete a Degree in Fine Arts.

The Hogwood family then emigrated to Australia, spending their first year in the newly opened Endeavour Migrant Hostel in Coogee.

“I got my first job as an ‘ink monkey’ at Southdown Press, which was located down the end of Bathurst Street [in central Sydney]. That taught me a lot about colour and also the production side of the artistic process. However I soon realised I didn’t want to be in printing – I wanted to be on the creative side.”

He managed to find a job as a junior art director at Modern Magazines and began working his way up the art direction ranks, including at Consolidated Press.

In 1974, newly married, Steve moved to The Blue Mountains where he met a local blacksmith named Wyndham Parsons who was “a real character”. They struck up a friendship and Parsons allowed Steve to work with him to develop his amateur blacksmithing skills when the young man had time.

Art direction in publishing led Steve to the advertising industry, where he worked for three decades. This included a senior role at George Patterson where he was involved in numerous major campaigns, including the Sydney Olympics. After George Patterson he ran his own agency and then a consultancy. Through advertising, Steve met and worked with numerous talented people in Australia’s small film industry, including Peter Weir and Chris Noonan. While his official role might be Art Director, Steve’s interest in blacksmithing meant he became involved in making props for both advertisements and film.

In between work contracts, Hogwood would also travel to Parkes to spend time with John Parker, a sixth generation blacksmith, wheelwright and coach builder whom Hogwood met while visiting the Elvis Festival for work.

And so while Hogwood built a successful professional career, he simultaneously pursued his passion for blacksmithing in what today might be called a side hustle.

“It allowed me to foster my love for ironwork and I loved it.”

1910 Ironworks

For the past 20 years, Steve has further developed his blacksmithing skills – and it is now his sole focus. Why did he name the business 1910 Ironworks?

“1910 is the point in history when the modern industrial way of life that we know started,” he explains. “It was the end of the Edwardian period and the end of the age of innocence. It was also the end of the artisan as such. It is when modern life started.”

More than 110 years later, old artisan skills survive in small pockets like Steve’s workshop in The Southern Highlands village of Wildes Meadow. His shed is overflowing with rusted tools collected over the decades as well as objects awaiting repair and restoration while enormous bellows, an assortment of anvils and cogs, cuts of metal, wooden carriage wheels, wringers and a range of other metal machines are distributed around the yard.

The company’s motto is: Forging the future while restoring the past.

Steve uses an open coal forge two or three times a week, despite the modern alternative of a gas forge. While a gas forge is very efficient and cleaner, a coal forge has important advantages.

“Blacksmiths today use a coal forge not just because they want to preserve traditional skills, but many say that a coal forge is hotter and more responsive. Also, because a coal forge is open, you can lay steel across it and move the steel around. A gas forge is a bit like a box and more constrained. A coal forge is also better for forge welding, where you take two pieces of white hot steel and join them together by hammering. That is very hard to do with a gas forge.”

A few years ago, 1910 Ironworks experienced a significant increase in demand.

“During COVID, blacksmithing went ballistic with people wanting things like gates and balustrades made. It was very busy and I had two guys working with me full time. After COVID, that work went back to places like China because it is so much cheaper.”

Thankfully, the reduction in that kind of blacksmithing work has been almost replaced by increased demand for restoration and sculptural work.

“In recent years I have been restoring a lot of vintage stoves because they require a real understanding of metalwork and there are a lot of little bits and pieces that need to be made by hand.”

Who wants an old stove restored instead of buying a new one with a vintage look?

“It might be a family heirloom and the family wants to restore it for posterity and to the standard when grandma had it. Or someone has bought the stove at an auction and wants to restore it to use as part of an outside kitchen or barbecue as a feature. And then there are younger people who have bought an old house and discovered an old stove in the kitchen or lounge room. They are interested in the historical significance of the stove and decide to have it restored.”

Most of Steve’s work results from word of mouth and the restoration of a vintage stove can lead to other fascinating challenges.

“I was in Nyngan restoring a magnificent old stove in the pub and a woman asked me about some figures made of spelter [a zinc-lead alloy that ages to resemble bronze]. The figures had been found in a local garden and she wanted to know if they were worth restoring. She sent me some photos, I did some research and discovered they were made by a well-known nineteenth century French artist named Auguste Poitevin. One figure was made in about 1840 and the other in about 1860. I told her they are definitely worth restoring.”

Other current restoration projects include a 1926 Tip Dray, which was pulled by large horses around Goulburn to cart heavy loads such as crushed rock for roads, a 19th century coffee mill and a 16th century Spanish sea chest.

Steve is grateful for the mentoring provided by the blacksmiths who have guided him over the decades, from Cliff in Barking to John Parker in Parkes and Wyndham Parsons in The Blue Mountains. More recently in The Southern Highlands, he spent valuable time with Josef Balog, a seventh generation blacksmith of Polish heritage whose sons founded the Artemis winery in Mittagong, before Josef died in 2017.

Steve is now 70 years old and keen to pass on his skills. He offers one-on-one blacksmithing classes but laments that many students only want to make objects like knives. 

“They are not interested in general blacksmithing or decorative work or how to make a beautiful, rolled hinge for a church. Unfortunately, those skills are dying – which is a real shame because I think there are applications for those skills in the modern world. 

“General blacksmithing is definitely dying, because there are cheaper options. It’s a horrible thing to say, but it is what it is.

“The saving grace looks to be restoration work and the artistic, sculptural side of things. I hope that continues. I love my work and I think it’s important for future generations.”

Beresford enjoyed a happy childhood on a property in rural New South Wales.

“I was a really busy kid who lived outside and loved riding bikes, climbing, playing with our horses and chickens, always creating and making things.”

The property was only a few hours’ drive from The Snowy Mountains and her family would go camping there in summer while in winter they would ski at Mount Selwyn. So began a lifelong love of this landscape with its meadows, mountain rivers and snow gums.

When she was seven years old, her family moved to Sydney. 

“My parents became really keen boaties. We’d hire yachts and go sailing, so I experienced the Hawkesbury from a very young age. I just loved being out on the water. It was how I was brought up and it was part of who I was.”

It was on these cherished sailing trips that she first learned to draw and paint.

“Mum liked being creative. She would take drawing stuff with us and I’d draw with her using charcoal.”

A seed had been planted and Beresford studied Art at school, including 3 Unit Art for her Higher School Certificate (HSC). She was inspired by the local bushland, walking and jogging through the Ku-ring-Gai Chase National Park whenever she could.

“There had been bad bushfires north of Sydney, so I collected charcoal and used it to draw with in my major work. I was pretty dedicated in Year 12. I used to paint at lunchtimes, which the Art Department thought was quite unusual. But I just loved it.”

After finishing high school “I wanted to do what I loved and I Ioved painting. It’s all I wanted to do. I wanted to go to COFA [College of Fine Arts] and fortunately I got in.”

She specialised in painting, drawing and printmaking and was inspired by tutors such as Idris Murphy. It was a wonderful three years but she laughs and admits: “I was partying far too much and just passed in the end.”

I’m in London still

After graduating from COFA, Beresford travelled overseas with friends. She bought a one way ticket “because I knew I’d be there a long time”. After six months of travelling she ran out of money and found a job in the ski fields of France before crossing The Channel to London, ready for a new challenge.

“A girl I studied with at COFA was working as a photographer’s assistant. She said: ‘Julz, I’ve found this great career for you – food styling.’ I said: “What’s that?” 

Her friend gave her a brief description and Beresford decided it was a great idea.

“I visited the local library and went through food magazines. I made a list of all the best food stylists that were busy and in the good magazines. I found their phone numbers and just rang them.”

This old fashioned cold-calling soon produced results.

“I was really lucky,” she says. “I worked with some of the best food stylists in London, giving me a great foundation in the industry.”

Busy in her new career, her art was placed on the back burner. She would draw or paint occasionally in her bedroom “but nothing consistent, which you need to do to get better”.

Creativity calls

Beresford returned to Australia after eight years abroad and set up her career as a freelance food stylist. As time passed, however, it became increasingly apparent that this career wasn’t creative enough for her any longer. She decided to limit her work as a food stylist and paint as often as she could in her garage.

She summoned the courage to post some of her paintings on Instagram and these images attracted the interest of Amber Creswell Bell, Director Emerging Art for the Michael Reid galleries.

“Amber kindly offered me the opportunity to exhibit in a group show and that led to an invitation to participate in A Painted Landscape, a group exhibition at the Michael Reid Berlin gallery in late 2020.”

She participated in two more shows the following year at the new Michael Reid Northern Beaches gallery before being invited to hold her first solo show, in March 2022, at Michael Reid Northern Beaches. This was followed by solo exhibitions at Michael Reid Southern Highlands in November 2022 and Michael Reid’s Sydney headquarters in January 2024. All three of these solo shows sold out.

On the water

Beresford’s Sydney home is about 10 minutes from Cottage Point, a secluded Sydney suburb of just 50 homes that is less than an hour’s drive north of Sydney. It sits serenely at the junction of Cowan and Coal & Candle Creeks and is surrounded by the beautiful bushland of Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. This is Beresford’s favoured base for exploring the Hawkesbury River and, as a regular customer, she is welcomed warmly by the staff at Cottage Point Kiosk and Boat Hire.

She usually books a tinny for two or three hours “but I often lose track of time and am out there for longer and have to apologise. There is something very peaceful and restful about being on the water. You are on your own, miles from anywhere. There is no mobile phone reception and you can really tune into nature. It’s like a release for me, being on the water. I feel alive, I feel amazing.”

Asked if she has any favourite spots, she replies: “I love being in a little bay with a hill in the distance. And I love the shadowy side of the Hawkesbury. There is always a sunny side and a shadowy side and I stick to the shadowy side. I like its moodiness and the depths of colours you can find. I’m really interested in colour and every time I go out it’s different because of the light, the time of day, the season, whether it’s rained the day before. I want to find the uniqueness of that day.”

In the studio

With her gouache field studies around her, Beresford gets to work.

“I am quite expressive in the way I paint. I’m very physical. It’s a fast, back and forward, back and forward, on the painting, off the painting, joyful and intense time. And I paint wet on wet, alla prima. It’s all about the moment, trying to convey the energy of the place and, I suppose, my relationship with it.

“I always scratch and draw in the composition, putting in the darker tones and building up. I use a brush for most of the early stages – I put on and take off, put on and take off – and I love keeping those brush marks visible in the painting.”

Beresford’s use of a palette knife “goes back to my food styling days of icing cakes and getting the cream perfect. I love the yummy ooziness of the oil paint and I use a medium to thin them out a bit and give them that luscious, velvety feel.”

Not everything will go to plan but Beresford revels in the problem solving aspects of her craft: “That bit’s not right, fix it; and that bit’s not right, fix that – it’s constant.”

Even during this brief visit, her passion for painting is evident.

“I am really focused when I’m in the studio,” she admits. “I literally fall into a trance. I have to set an alarm because otherwise I forget to pick up the kids from school.”

As Time Drifts on a River’s Path

Beresford’s latest exhibition, titled As Time Drifts on a River’s Path, features paintings from the two regions she has had a close relationship with since her childhood and with which she still has a deep connection: The Snowy Mountains and The Hawkesbury River.

“I tend not to paint the Hawkesbury all year because I yearn to improve my trade and I believe to get better I need to shift gear to a different landscape. It’s important for me to jump around a little bit. It keeps me alive and makes me really think about what I am trying to achieve.”

And what is she trying to achieve?

“I am always questioning myself, asking if I am expressing the feeling of the place when I paint. I want to capture the moments when I was on the water or the magic of the mountains. I want to remember the way I held the paintbrush while I was out there ‘plein air’ because it felt right. Each painting has its own story.”

Pieces of paper attached to her studio walls have handwritten notes reminding her to “express the purpose of place”, “celebrate the paint” and “lose yourself in the moment of expression”.

Remarkably, Beresford has only been painting full time for three years. She has built a strong following and is looking forward to the future with her characteristic calm yet energetic determination.

“I’m totally addicted. I can’t get enough of it. I know the only way I’m going to get better is to keep practising, to keep working every day. It’s who I am now.” 

As Time Drifts on a River’s Path will be showing at Michael Reid Southern Highlands from 22 February until 24 March.

Snake Creek Cattle Company

Hugh and Alice breed their cattle in The Southern Highlands.

“We produce well marbled F1 Wagyu, which means Wagyu bulls over Angus cows. The calves are then taken to Mandurama [between Cowra and Bathurst] which is very good finishing country and they are pasture-raised and finished. They go through the abattoir in Cowra and are then brought back to the on-farm butchery here in Werai where we make all our steaks, hamburger patties, sausages and gourmet pies. We pride ourself on producing pasture to plate beef with no added hormones, antibiotics or artificial ingredients.”

Hugh is a large man, and he wears a large hat, however he recognises that size isn’t everything.

“Our objective is not to grow something big, because big is not always best. People today are super-interested in where their food comes from, the whole supply chain, and they really appreciate quality. Because we are small we can maintain a high quality approach to everything we do and offer it at a reasonable price. Importantly, because we are a farm-direct-to-customer business, our customers can visit us and see exactly where their produce comes from. When they come in, we know who they are, what they want and we can look after them. It sounds a bit old school but it still works.”

The large, glass door fridge in the farm gate café offers an enticing range of Snake Creek beef cuts including Scotch Fillet, Sirloin, T-bone, Ribs and Brisket as well as sausages and mince. And then there are the home-made pies: Wagyu beef, beef ale and mushroom, Moroccan beef tagine, Massaman beef with cashews as well as vegetarian options such as mushroom and leek.

Most of their customers are Southern Highlands locals while they also supply steaks, burger patties and pies to two Sydney pubs owned by Hugh and Alice – the Imperial Hotel, Paddington and the newly renovated Resch House in the Sydney CBD – as well as the Royal Hotel Mandurama, known colloquially as The Mando Pub.

Horsemanship

Snake Creek’s ethical approach to its beef business extends to only using horses, and not loud machines such as motorcycles or helicopters, to move their herds.

“We do all of our mustering on horseback, the old school way, because we believe in quieter livestock practices.”

Hugh and Alice are keen to ensure these traditional skills survive and Snake Creek offers a range of on-site, educational horsemanship clinics and programs.

“We bring trainers in, mostly western-style cow horse sports including cutting and reining, and we limit each program to about a dozen participants. Again, big isn’t best, so we keep the group at about that number.”

The clinics are conducted in the Ranch Arena, which is 60 metres by 40 metres and has covered stands on two sides. “Fence sitters” are welcome to come along, watch, listen and learn.

Most of those attending the clinics stay on the Werai property, camping or taking advantage of the rustic accommodation. They enjoy dinner under the stars which features a fireside feast with produce supplied from the farm.

“It’s not just about horsemanship, it’s the country hospitality as well,” says Hugh.

The horsemanship clinics are part of a broader focus on the Southern Highlands equine industry for Hugh and Alice.

“It passes under the radar a bit, but there are a lot of fantastic operators and we are keen to foster and support it wherever we can.”

Education and community

Hugh and Alice’s support for education and training extends beyond the equine industry. 

“We recognise that it’s really important to keep pathways into employment and to help local people get training and get good jobs in the area if they want to stay here – because there is certainly no shortage of work,” says Alice.

“This includes our agri-entrepeneurship program which involves more mature schoolkids coming to stay with us for a few days. They get to see the agricultural side of the business, including our direct-to-customer programs, and the hospitality side, including sales and marketing. It’s been really successful and we’ve had great responses from the schools involved.”

Hugh and Alice also allow community groups to take advantage of infrastructure on the property, particularly The Saddler’s Shed, which is “unofficially the Werai Town Hall”.

“It’s an easy place for local groups to have their gatherings. A mothers’ group meets here, we’ve had photography groups and artists in residence and the local pipe band didn’t have anywhere to go so they come and practise here – and the cattle love the bagpipes!

“The local community are the ones who truly support us and it’s part of who we are.”

When Hugh met Alice

Hugh grew up around Bungendore and then the Central West of New South Wales “but like a lot of country kids I couldn’t wait to get away from the bush and I travelled overseas for quite a few years. When I came back to Australia I set up a business which involved taking over any pub that no one else wanted to run. That ended up being quite a lot of pubs because the industry was facing a lot of challenges. We didn’t have a lot of experience but we had a lot of energy. Over time we expanded into other hospitality businesses and then further broadened our skill set to provide consultancy services to museums, childcare centres and any business that needed a turnaround.

“We transitioned from RM Williams boots into pinstripe suits.”

It was a successful business but also a very busy one. One day, Hugh realised he had come full circle.

“From a young man who couldn’t wait to get away from the bush, I realised all I really wanted to be was a cowboy. So Alice and I started working our way back down to The Southern Highlands, where Alice’s family had a property.”

Alice grew up in Jersey in the Channel Islands, however she has had a life-long connection with Australia: “My mother [a descendant of the Resch brewing family] was born in Sydney, my grandfather was born in Wilcannia, my grandmother was born in Casino and my great grandmother was born in Toongabbie. I have had an Australian passport and been an Australian citizen all my life.”

Hugh and Alice met in a boardroom 25 years ago when Hugh was brought in to resolve “a spot of bother. We got on pretty well and ended up making a life together.”

“We’ve run projects together pretty much since that day,” says Alice.

Drought, bushfires and COVID

The Werai Tea House, a local institution run by a husband and wife for many years, operated from the property next door to Hugh and Alice. When the husband died about a decade ago, Hugh and Alice acquired the property and continued to run the business with its edible garden and nursery. They expanded the offering, including farm tours and accommodation, and changed the name to Farm Club.

“We were early adopters in that agritourism space and it was very popular,” says Hugh.

But then, like so many others, they were hit hard by the drought of 2018. 

“It was very tough and we had to fight hard to maintain our herd. There was no groundwater and at one stage we were trucking in hay from Western Australia.” 

They struggled through the drought – and then the bushfires came through. 

“The property backs on to National Park and the fires came belting out of there and burnt about 200 acres,” recalls Hugh. “It was an exhausting and difficult time. We had to evacuate horses and all our guests and, thankfully, we didn’t lose any livestock.”

“It was life-changingly frightening,” says Alice.

Just as they were contemplating reopening for business, “COVID rolled in over the top of us”. 

It took over a year to put all the various moving parts that make up Snake Creek Cattle Company back in place and the farm gate café finally reopened in April this year.

Hugh and Alice clearly enjoy the challenge and relish the hard work required to build an agribusiness – integrating beef production, horsemanship, hospitality and education – that will make a meaningful, long-term contribution to the Southern Highlands community. 

“If we can offer something that is ethical, sustainable, high quality and affordable then that is great for our locals.”

For more information visit www.snakecreekcattlecompany.com

The Waters family home was in Newport and Ben went to primary school and then high school in nearby Avalon.

“I was always aware of nature, checking the surf each morning as I rode my bike to school. My days were determined by tide and swell and wind.”

He and his sister Missy, who is three years older, spent a lot of time at the beach.

“Our parents said we had to swim seven laps of Avalon pool before we were allowed to have a foam surfboard. On the day my sister was doing her swim, she was 10 and I was 7, I just jumped in and swam seven laps. I so desperately wanted to get a board and be out in the waves.” 

Ben’s father, Terry, was a highly skilled signwriter who had his studio in the garage and worked with leading designers and artists including Gordon Andrews and Ken Done. This had a significant influence on young Ben.

“He had paint, he had charcoal, he had chalk – it was all there. As a young kid, it looked to me like Dad was painting on the wall, so one day I did a drawing on the wall in the house. My mum was so cranky, but Dad was like: ‘He’s expressing himself!’”

In his primary school days, Ben was a huge fan of Star Wars and he would make back drops for his Star Wars figures out of leftover materials found in the garage and discarded polysterene packaging. Still today “I drive my family crazy unless I’m making something. Even when I was a full time teacher, I was making handsurfers and little boats out of building material offcuts.”

His mother, Tanya, was also creative, making the family’s clothes as well as picture frames, which she sold for some additional income. His maternal grandparents also had a significant influence as he was growing up.

“They lived in The Rocks and we would visit them every second weekend. So, unlike a lot of my friends in the ‘insular peninsula’, I had a sense of the city. We would wander around the back streets of The Rocks and, as I got older, we would go to art galleries. I didn’t tell any of my mates about this, but it was definitely a calling card of me knowing there was a space outside of here that I really loved.”

Waters “did what he needed to get by” at high school, but he loved studying art and remembers having wonderful art teachers.

“Our school was pretty much right on the beach at Avalon. My favourite day was doing art at lunch time and then after school I’d run to my mate’s house, which was across the road from the school, we’d have a surf and then I’d ride my bike home to Newport.”

When he finished high school, “I wanted to study Fine Arts, but I put the wrong course code on the form and got accepted into Art Education at the College of Fine Arts. I thought, oh well, I’ll just do that. I still did art courses, but we studied education and psychology and I really enjoyed that side of things. I stuck with it and did four years of Art Education.”

After graduation, instead of going straight into teaching he accepted a job with Atelier Paints.

“They were starting up a process of going to art schools, art colleges and art societies and demonstrating the materials they made. I travelled all over NSW, and to Queensland and Victoria, and technique-wise it was a great education for me because I’d missed that training at art school.”

He worked for Atelier for 18 months and then travelled overseas for a year before returning to start work as a teacher. He has taught at Stella Maris College, Manly in various capacities for the past 25 years

While teaching is “incredibly fulfilling”, Waters soon realised “there was something missing, and that was the ability to make stuff”. So he started doing some creative jobs after hours, including producing black and white line drawings of houses in Mosman for property sale advertisements.

He also began working for a surf company.

“I met a guy called Jim Mitchell at Whale Beach. He was an artist working for Mambo and we got on really well, with our shared loved of surfing and drawing. He established a company called The Critical Slide Society and I was involved for about seven years. 

“My favourite memories of this time are drawing with my kids as they were growing up. I used to play a game with Dad when I was young. I was totally into Star Wars so he would draw a rocket and stick it on the fridge. I would draw another rocket blowing his rocket up and we would go back and forth for a week or so and at the end we would have a drawing of a full inter-galactic battle.

“With my kids, I would do a drawing and then they would come in and just draw all over it, with no sense that it had taken me two hours to do. For me it was the purest form of happiness, because I was doing something and the kids were involved and it was like we were in a flow state. There was no talking, we were just drawing together.”

Ben’s wife Natalie was literally the girl next door. That is, she moved to Newport to stay with a friend, who was Ben’s neighbour. She is also a trained teacher and it was her decision to apply for a two year placement on Lord Howe Island in 2017 and 2018 that would have a huge impact on her husband.

“We’d been there for a family holiday and fell in love with the place,” Ben explains. “I’d always struggled to devote enough time to produce a full body of work and Nat saw Lord Howe as an opportunity to get some great teaching experience for her, give the kids a wonderful experience that they wouldn’t otherwise have and give me some time to develop a body of work that I could do something with – and that’s literally what happened.

“It was the sliding door moment of my life.”

After making the mistake of doing too many part-time jobs in the first few months – as a bike mechanic, tree lopper and laying out the local newspaper – Waters settled on one job while grasping the invaluable opportunity to observe, draw and paint. 

“I spent time with the kids before and after school and then in the middle of the day I had time to paint and go on long walks and immerse myself in nature. From that point, I really connected back to when I was a little kid. That feeling I used to get out in the surf, I got that same feeling on these bush tracks, realising that nature is awe-inspiring and it does wonderful, healing things to your mind. It calms you, it slows down your pulse rate, it allows you to open up to different thoughts – and it’s intoxicating.”

Before Lord Howe Island, Waters had not exhibited much of his work. He sold a few paintings while he was there and this gave him some confidence that others might be interested in what he was doing. His wife’s support through this time was invaluable. 

“Nat always says: ‘I knew that you had this in you, you just had to realise you had it in you.’” 

Waters was in his mid-40s when the family were living on Lord Howe Island. Is this when he realised he wanted to be an artist?

“I was always scared of the word ‘artist’ because I thought it sounded too wanky,” he replies honestly. “It was more that I thought I couldn’t come back to Avalon and not do this. I didn’t want it to be just a little blip in my life. The reason we had gone to Lord Howe was because we felt a bit comfortable and we wanted to challenge ourselves. So it was more about challenging myself.”

On his return to the mainland, Waters joined the Pittwater Artists Trail and connected with Sydney Road Gallery. He met “a lot of like-minded people” and, because the gallery is run as a collective, learned about the logistics of how an art gallery works. 

He also caught the eye of Amber Creswell Bell, who invited him to be part of a couple of group shows before he was offered a solo show with Michael Reid Northern Beaches (titled A Place to Breathe) in May 2021 and again in May 2022 (Quiet Moments). The sell-out success of both these exhibitions led to a solo show at Michael Reid Sydney in January 2023 (Shared Places) – and all the paintings from that show also sold.

The title of Waters’ new exhibition is Come Walk With Me. 

“When you go out on your own with a sketch book and pencil and no agenda, you find out all sorts of stuff about yourself. In many ways for landscape painters, the landscapes they paint are portraits of themselves.

“When we returned from Lord Howe Island, I went on long walks around the Palm Beach headlands trying to get some sense of what it meant to be back and wondering how we would replant ourselves. I realised that is what I want to paint – I want to paint the way it makes me feel. Once I decided that, I steered away from painting a particular scene and my works have morphed into capturing some essence of this area but also some essence of myself. That might be memories of walking with my kids or I’ve had something tough going on and I need healing in some way – that is what I’m chasing.”

Waters looks forward to seeing how his audience responds to his work.

“I want to share my paintings with other people even though that can be incredibly confronting. As artists, we spend so much time producing our work in solitude, I want to see what it does when it goes out into the world. It’s like I’ve started a conversation.”

If you would like to join the conversation with Ben Waters, Come Walk With Me is showing at Michael Reid Northern Beaches from 20 September with the artist attending the opening event from 2-4pm on Saturday 23 September.

The Reid brothers grew up very happily on a sheep and wheat property in Cootamundra. Their father, John, had been a builder in Sydney but became disillusioned with the proliferation of project homes and decided to move to the Riverina region in the mid-1960s with his wife, Marie, and try his hand at farming.

Stuart was 3½ and Cameron was six months old when the family moved to the country “so our whole upbringing was on a farm”. They went to a primary school in Eurongilly that was run by a husband and wife teaching team and boasted about 30 students.

While Cameron always wanted to be a farmer, Stuart was born with a love of woodwork.

“As early as primary school, I’d drag Dad’s tools out and make something,” Stuart recalls. “It was usually pretty bad, but I just loved it. I got a natural pleasure from working with wood. No one really encouraged me, but no one discouraged me.”

The brothers started at Cootamundra High School, but when it seemed likely that Stuart wasn’t destined for a life on the land, he was sent to board at Knox Grammar School in Sydney. He did very well at woodwork, but that subject wasn’t available for study beyond Year 10.

“By that stage I’d decided I was going to be a cabinet maker. I did some work experience with some builders, but I hated it because there was no precision. Dad encouraged me to do some work experience with some furniture making firms and I thought: ‘Yes, this is it.’”

After high school, Stuart spent four years doing his apprenticeship and then, like so many Australians, he went to the UK for a working holiday.

“I needed to earn money and the first job I got was as a cabinet maker with Peter Hall & Son in the Lake District. They made only bespoke pieces and it was an epiphany for me. The English, with their respect for crafts and centuries of tradition, did things so much better than we did. In Australia we were very good at making furniture at a production level, but the English were so superior at making beautiful, bespoke, hand-made furniture. And that’s also where I fell in love with oak.”

Stuart returned to Australia and, as luck would have it, he met a young woman named Sue from the Lake District who was on a working holiday in Sydney. He followed her back to London, where he found work with another firm of cabinet makers, and the next year he and Sue were married.

Cameron, meanwhile, had followed Stuart into the world of wood.

“Mum and Dad always said that before we could be farmers, we had to do something else first, so we were a bit more worldly. I went to visit Cam in the boarding house at Knox just before his HSC. He knew the rules about doing something else before farming and I said I could get him a job where I was working. That made it easy for him and he decided to do it. He thought he’d do a trade for four years and then be a farmer. It turned out that Cam is a much better furniture maker than me.”

When the Reid brothers were younger, they would visit relatives in The Southern Highlands around Christmas time.

“It was hot and dusty on the farm in December, but it wasn’t that hot in the Highlands and it was still reasonably green. Dad used to say that when he and Mum sold the farm they would move here – and they did, in the late 1980s.”

Soon after their wedding, Stuart told his wife Sue that he wanted to have a go at starting his own business, based in the big shed his father had built in Bundanoon. It was only decades later, not long before he died, that John Reid admitted to his son that he had built such a large shed because he hoped his sons might use it.

“We were so naïve,” Stuart says. “We started a business in a shed in a Bundanoon paddock, intending to make the best furniture you could get. And it was 1992, so we were in a recession. But we put our Reid Brothers shingle up and gave it a go. We are both perfectionists and we were determined from the beginning to be the best. We want our furniture to be functional art – to do its job but to be as lovely to look at as the paintings on the wall above it.”

This striving for excellence was inherited from their father.

“As a farmer, Dad had a reputation for producing very high quality lamb and wool. He thought if you are going to do something, you have to make sure it’s really good. And Cam and I can’t do something that’s just ‘good enough’.”

Their first customers were “sympathetic family and friends who gave us little jobs like wall units and TV cabinets”. Their reputation slowly spread by word of mouth, but it took five years to become consistently busy so that they could justify employing a third person. Reid Brothers today still only has seven employees, including the two brothers, and they have no desire to grow larger.

“Labour is expensive and skilled labour is very limited, so most joinery firms have become computerised. That means you have to dumb down the designs and we don’t want to do that. We are not in any way businessmen, we’re still tradesmen, and we are not at all savvy about how to promote ourselves apart from doing a job well and being honest.”

For their first 25 years, most of their clients were based in Sydney. But since 2018 they have been able to be more selective and almost all their customers are now based in The Southern Highlands.

Stuart and Cameron are pleasantly surprised there is still demand for their custom-designed, hand-made, premium quality furniture. In fact, their pipeline has never been stronger.

“I think it’s because we’re getting old. When we started, in our late 20s, we weren’t that confident and we were asking people to invest a significant amount of money in furniture when we could only show them the drawings. Now we are more confident – and I’ve got wrinkles and I’m bald.”

Stuart is 60 and Cameron is 57, so succession planning is front of mind. They both have three children, but all six are pursuing other careers – in law, nursing, teaching, geology, physiotherapy and farming – and have no interest in carrying on the family business.

“They think this is a mad way to make a living,” Stuart laughs.

They say they are in a “purple patch” with their current team of skilled workers at Reid Brothers, several of whom have been with them since they were apprentices, but while they all love their career in the workshop “none of them wants to run the show”.

Stuart and Cameron recently attended a Lost Trades Fair which focused on lost and rare trades and crafts.

“We went because we discovered that cabinet makers were on the list – and that’s very sad.”

To read more about Reid Brothers (who are not related to Michael Reid in any way) visit reidbrothersfurniture.com.au