About me and my art

I’m Liss, a Canberra based artist best known for my paintings of Australian birds. In my day job I’m a consultant. All painting happens on the kitchen table, often late at night. I also write sci-fi/fantasy fiction, sometimes even later at night.

I picked up the paintbrush after having my first daughter in 2014, and started selling prints in 2016 when my second daughter arrived. After nine years I found myself stuck halfway through a bird, and painted nothing for a year. I thought I was done, but it turned out I just needed to retire the birds!

I’ve had a creative explosion in the last few months, and am working on new collections of portraits, floral still life, woodcut prints, and paintings centering on the theme of fiction. You can read more about my art practice and influences below.

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Join me on instagram to watch new art unfold:

The one that nearly worked. I love this colour 😍. I'm working with acid-free 'kraft' (read: unbleached brown) paper because why does everything have to be clean and white? It really changes the tone of the paints, bringing some earth to all the colo

For every one that succeeds, there are several that fail...

I've been working on getting the #gelliplate to do what I want for a series of tulip prints for Floriade season in Canberra. Here's what the finished product doesn't look like 😆

Gelli pr

No writing, just painting. #wipart #artsunday #shutupandpaint

I made the #gelliplate do something! This is an image transfer using a double printed laser copy from officeworks and some block printing ink. They don’t lie, those gelli image transfers aren’t easy 😅. I’m working on a tulip print

Progress! What I love most about piece is the light. I’ve started blocking in how it shines through the liquid (can you guess what it is?) by layering in the lowlights (aka the dark bits). One I’ve got that down, I’ve got plenty of

Some cockies in their forever home 🥰. This is what the full sized native bird prints look like framed. Thanks @vixamon for making them look so great!

First attempt at a gelli plate image transfer print - looks 0% like it’s supposed to 😆. Check out @bluelavaart to see what was meant to be happening here… I have faith! #gelliplate #gelliprint

As soon as there was a piece of orange, I knew it was going to work.

I’ve been secretly up to something... my first acrylic painting 🤗. Acrylic is amazing - you can just keep painting over it, and over it, and over it - no mistake is unerasable! No line unmovable, no colour unchangeable! Coming from watercolour

Thanks to @wotso.symonston for hosting my birds in their lounge 🙂

#canberralife #canberraart

Influences

Watercolour

Louise De-Masi, who is an amazing watercolour artist, first inspired my interest in painting native birds. There are many wildlife and botanical artists who use watercolour in detailed and expressive ways, many you can find on on Instagram. Heidi Willis, for example, does incredibly detailed work. Then there are the classics - illustrations from bird and plant field guides, of which you’ll find many at the Botanical Gardens bookshop in Canberra.

Woodcuts

For woodcut printing I am hugely inspired by two Australian artists; Cressida Campbell and Rachel Newling. Cressida carves immensely detailed, enormous woodblocks and prints them with watercolour paint. Rachel carves more stylised and intricate lino blocks and hand-paints the prints. I also love the design of Japanese style mokuhanga, with the use of multiple blocks to create intricate detail in colour, and have several at home. You’ll find all this and more at Megalo Print Studio in Canberra, where I brushed up on my printmaking techniques.

Oil paint

Back when I was a uni student, I was also a life model. I watched artists and learned technique by listening to two classically trained lecturers at the Claremont School of Art, John Paul and Richard Merito, all while lying around for money. As an artist I’d put off oil painting my whole life, for many reasons. It’s expensive, technical (fat over lean!), involves fumes, and takes months to dry. What turned it around was oil sticks - a giant crayon of oil paint you can apply straight onto the canvas. Finally I’m on the bandwagon with what I learnt twenty years ago.

Women Artists

You may notice most of my inspirations are women artists. They, and I, focus on subjects more commonly painted by women. Historically this has been a major barrier barring entry to the formal art world. But fortunately, there is no longer the need for gallery representation to be seen, and every reason to keep painting what women paint, so I will.