ARTIST BIO

Watercolour runs in Libby’s veins, going back four generations in her family. She has a strong appreciation of the beauty in natural landscapes and works plein air weekly.

Working intuitively, Libby focuses on authenticity of marks and representing sounds and visual movements through line. She begins by laying down the sounds and movements in the landscape, currently drawn to bird song, noting this down through masked and pencil lines. Next she builds the visual elements, painting with washes or shape and form, pulling together the colours of the landscape. Libby likes to push the medium of watercolour, experimenting on unexpected substrates. She has long been drawn to the use of envelopes, going back to treasured airmail letters kept in envelopes as a child, to bookbinding with them in printmaking. Using worn, torn envelopes, there is a resurgence of new life in a once discarded item giving prominence and ultimately admiration.

Libby has been finalist in the McClelland’s Splash Contemporary Watercolour Awards, the Queensland Regional Art Awards and multiple times in the Du Rietz Art Awards and the Local Artist Local Content Awards.

Originally from England, she studied Visual Art at Surrey Institute of Art and Design in the UK before emigrating. At Monash University, Victoria, Libby studied teaching, majoring in Visual Art, and after 15 years as an arts educator she is now a full-time artist.