Julie Simmons & Mellissa Read Devine – Travels with Clarice

Julie travels in her campervan, Clarice, to many places of natural beauty to sketch and paint. On many of these trips Mellissa joins Julie and together they endeavour to capture the emotion and a sense of the place. 

Both Julie and Mellissa are entranced with the natural beauty of the bush, the wild uninhabited places including Arkaroola, Mutawintji, The Grampians, The Barka and much more. It is their hope that the awe and wonder they feel is conveyed to the viewer.

The sketchbooks, drawings and paintings produced are used to inform their studio work. These preliminary works provide inspiration for larger and more interpretive pieces. 

Julies’ works consist of colourful watercolours and acrylics with the added use of wax pastels and charcoal to add creative mark making adding another dimension whilst Mellissa will present a collection of linocuts that portray the same landscapes in graphic black and white.

With both living in a rural setting, Julie overlooking the Nepean River and the Lower Blue Mountains and Mellissa enjoying a bushland setting in the Hawkesbury, it is unsurprising they both have a love of landscape, however they have developed their own unique ways of producing artwork on a two-dimensional surface.

Visit the exhibition and experience your own visual journey with Clarice.