Cathy Oliver has a 40-year career in editing and project management for trade and educational publishers, book buying and selling, writing educational materials and tutoring VCE English. She has published six books and has had over 100 VCE English study guides published by the Senior Students’ Resource Centre in Melbourne’s CBD.
Cathy is a lifelong lover of learning. She attended Melbourne Girls’ Grammar, The University of Melbourne, La Trobe University and online Charles Sturt University, and Melbourne Polytechnic.
Cathy is qualified with BA (Hons, English Language and Literature); Dip Ed (Primary), BEd (Secondary), Grad Cert Educational Research, Grad Cert Information Studies.
She also holds Cert IVs in TAE 40116, and Professional Writing & Editing.
Nadine was born in Melbourne but grew up in Canberra. There she developed a love of wildlife, particularly birds. From a young age, she drew these in inks and coloured pencils. On a visit with her mother to a watercolour art class, she fell in love with the medium. Nadine writes of that class in the book’s Introduction:
During that class, what truly captivated me was watching an experienced student in another room painting vividly coloured gum leaves on a full sheet of paper, each with a single fluid stroke. It was that graceful movement leaving behind a stunning trail of red and orange that made me realise this was my medium. While I wasn’t drawn to painstakingly counting petals or rendering tiny details with a minuscule brush, I wanted to paint strong bold strokes and watch the pigment change into something unexpected and beautiful. That was the start of my watercolour journey, some 15 years ago.
While I lack the patience for botanical art, I love the clean backgrounds and laser like focus on the subject. I now relish the challenge of combining the speed and fluidity of watercolour with the accuracy of a finely detailed focal point to draw the eye while allowing the viewer to fill in the rest. I’m often asked about the lack of feet in many of my paintings. It’s not that I dislike painting them (though perhaps I don’t love it), but I prefer for my subject to float, to drift toward the edge of the page unanchored. I’ve found birds are the perfect muse for this: they lend themselves naturally to a sense of movement and light, which is at the heart of how I paint.
Nadine’s former career as an immunologist working at the Universities of Melbourne and Monash trained her to observe meticulously; this complements her clear and clean painting.
Not surprisingly, Nadine has won many awards in exhibitions.
Roma McLaughlin is an artist of intricacy who lives in NE Melbourne. Her creative practice includes illustration, painting, papercutting and Book Art.
Her children and adult book illustrations for publishers include Cole’s Publications, Black Dog Books, Five Mile Press and Macmillan Publishing.
For Macmillan Art Publishing, Roma illustrated a book of poetry by Barbara M. Moore called Cosmic Collisions and Falling Bodies (2010).
Her papercuts and Book Art are in the Whitehorse Art Collection and she is honoured to have been published in the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum, London) publication, Papercrafts. A Maker’s Guide.
Roma has featured in many exhibitions not only in Melbourne but also wider afield and overseas.
Inspiration
Earlier Paintings
Her earlier paintings used the spiral shapes of the passionfruit vine and the intertwining knot patterns from Celtic Art to create intricate mandalas reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts.
Current Paper Art
Roma’s paper art is inspired by the detailed patterns found in Art Nouveau, Asian decorative arts and more recently in Nature’s organic forms observed in the Ocean, and also the local rivers bushland where she lives.
Michael Metzger emigrated as a child with his parents from post-Holocaust Europe to Australia. Educated at the University of Melbourne with studies in Language, Literature, Fine Arts, Philosophy and Education, he spent thirty years as a teacher, lecturer and mentor.
The death of his father and, shortly after, that of his son, fundamentally re-shaped his life. As a qualified journalist he brought the experience of his metamorphosis to an earlier published work, Towards The Light – Growing Through Grief (Michelle Anderson Publishing, 2008), one that recognises the legitimacy of our feelings as we stumble from death to the fullness of life.
The lifelong impact of his parents’ story has gestated among copious other writings on history, philosophy and religion during his professional career, culminating in a deeper awareness of history’s shaping of our humanity.