2011 Artists

Participating Artists:

• Alex Cearns / Houndstooth Studio
• Zaaron Crosby
• Sarah Davison
• Sharon Dawes
• Michelle Dawson
• Jasmeet Flora
• Gaye Godfrey-Nicholls
• Stephanie Ives
• Ramona Janssen
• Claude Jones
• Jo-Anne McArthur
• Ciara Moore
• Lottie Moore
• Yvette Watt

Artist Bios:

Alex Cearns / Houndstooth Studio

Houndstooth Studio specialises exclusively in professional pet and animal photography, creating stunning portraits for their  furred, feathered, finned and fanged clients. They’ve combined their extensive animal handling expertise with skillful use of studio lighting to create a relaxed and fear-free photo session for any creature, capturing their subjects in full colour and intricate detail. Their multi-award winning and widely published photographer, Alex Cearns, is a contributing photographer for over fifteen animal charity organisations.

Zaaron Crosby

Zaaron Crosby is a Visual Artist interested in all aspects of creative expression, including painting, photography and mixed medium. Born in London, Zaaron arrived in Australia in 1999 and was immediately struck by the natural beauty in Western Australia. After travelling extensively around the coast of Australia, Zaaron settled back in Western Australia in 2000 and now works in the foot-hills of Kalamunda Shire painting and exploring various mediums and styles.

Zaaron is the owner and director of the online art gallery, Artless Impact, which provides a medium for ethically minded people to purchase sustainable, ecologically sound, fair trade artworks.

Trained as a Creativity Coach, Zaaron runs the Creativity Coaching practice “think.feel.dream”, and is passionate about creativity and the creative process. He has worked with Novelists and Visual Artists around the world supporting their journey’s to better understand and push past creative blocks, to think big and work more productively on meaningful projects and to overcome doubts, fears and anxieties that so often hinder the creative mind.

Sarah Davison

Sarah Davison is an artist based in Victoria with a particular interest in portraiture as well as animal subjects.  She primarily works with pencil and in recent years has explored the natural affinity children have for animals and their shared innocence.  Portraiture is used as a means of creating an immediate and empathetic connection between the viewer and the animal subject.  Her intention is to promote an ‘ethic of care’ towards animals.  She also operates an online vegan store and her family share their home with a dog and three cats.

Sharon Dawes

Sharon Dawes is a very successful full-time artist who specialises in painting animals.  Her first solo exhibition, ‘Colonial Animal’, was a sell-out (June 2008), and she is currently preparing for her fourth solo exhibition ‘Zodiac’, to be held in November.  Her work is very quirky and unique and has attracted a large following in the last three years, with many works receiving awards or being purchased by overseas buyers.

Michelle Dawson

Born in New Zealand, Michelle Dawson moved to Australia in 1985. She has been working as a professional artist since 1996 and has studied both in Australia and the UK. Michelle has been shortlisted for several major art prizes including the Robert Jacks Drawing Prize, the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize and the BSG Small Works Prize. She has twice represented Australia at the Intercontinental Biennale of Small Graphics in Romania and was shortlisted for the CBCA 2009 Crichton Award for Best New Illustrator for her drawings for “How Weird Is That…” She  lives and works in a converted church near the east coast in rural NSW.

Jasmeet Flora

Jasmeet Flora was born in Kenya in 1992 before moving to Australia at the age of 9. A proud and practicing Sikh, she has always embraced her spirituality expressed through music and art. She has just completed high school and hopes to pursue a career in speech pathology and art therapy. Brought up as a vegetarian she is compassionate about the wellbeing of animals; this also stems from the Sikh belief of reincarnation. After attending the National Art School in Sydney NSW, she developed a profound passion for sketching and painting the human figure and further developed her skills in mixed media and painting. This artwork is part of her year 12 TEE visual arts major work.

Gaye Godfrey-Nicholls

A lifelong animal lover, I became vegan in 1996 and have been involved in animal rights organisations and activities since then, including being a founder member of ARA. I believe we should live as ethically as we can and minimise the suffering of all beings. For artistic inspiration I like wordplay, subtext, mythology, the sacred, esoteric and arcane, symbolism, layers, insight and flow. For more lowbrow activities I like reading sci-fi/fantasy/anything good, cult tv, music, film, exercising and fitness, searching for the perfect organisational system, gardening, looking after my furred menagerie, green tea by the gallon, green smoothies and raw vegan cheesecake! Inklings Calligraphy

Stephanie Ives

Steph Ives was born in England February 1990, migrated to Australia at the age of 2 with her mother and sister. She began drawing at a very early aged and was inspired by many animated films like “Watership Down”, “Rover Dangerfiled’. Also by the wide rang of pets and wild life. Steph’s art continued to progress, heavily influenced by the genre ‘pop surrealism’ a type of art depicting dreams and the subconscious mind, juxtaposition with fantasy. Artists like Greg “Craola” Simkins” and Gris Grimly are all inspiring in this field. In 2010 Steph’s artwork was featured in the magazine CROK issue 4, also a member of Propel Youth Arts W.A. Steph Ives’ artwork is always evolving and changing.

Ramona Janssen

Ramona was born and raised in Perth. She spent much of her childhood drawing, determined to be an artist. In 2008 she commenced studying Visual Art at Central Institute of Technology and in 2010 was awarded her Advanced Diploma. In love and in awe of our fellow beings, Ramona encourages humans to become more aware of how amazing the creatures are with who we share our world.

Claude Jones

Claude Jones is a Sydney based artist who creates hybrid, mutant and anthropomorphized forms that question our complex and often contradictory relationship with nature.     Since 2005, the artist has been exploring the theme of hybridism in a series of solo exhibitions with titles including Taxonomy, Peculiar Biologies, Mythology & Biology, Mutation & Imagination and Hybrid states. Jones has participated in numerous group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Her works are held in the collections of the AGNSW, in Artbank and in international public and private collections. Claude Jones is represented by Edwina Corlette Gallery in Brisbane and Artereal Gallery in Sydney.

Jo-Anne McArthur

Jo-Anne McArthur has been documenting animal rights issues around the globe and on all seven continents for ten years.  Through her lens, brutal and complex worlds unfold about humans’ uses, abuses and sharing of spaces with animals. The goal of this work, pieced together in her documentary We Animals, is to photograph our interactions with animals in such a way that the viewer finds new significance in these often ordinary and overlooked relationships.  Jo-Anne is a contributing photographer to Redux Pictures and her We Animals project has garnered several grants and awards. Over 60 not-for-profit organizations who work to help animals have benefited from the free use of her images and volunteer work.

Ciara Moore

Ciara Moore is a visual artist based in Dublin, Ireland. In 2000 she graduated from the National College of Art and Design and received her MA Art in the Contemporary World at NCAD in 2007. In 2008 she was the inaugural recipient of the National Sculpture Factory’s Ireland/Australia Residency at UTAS in Hobart, Tasmania and Artspace, Sydney. In December 2009 she took part in the Mamori Art Lab sound residency in the Amazon jungle, Brazil. Working primarily with video installation her work also includes sound, text, and dialogue with scientists and philosophers. Drawing on material gathered through her research into animal signals and natural phenomenon she reflects upon our often tragic and humorous attempts at meaningful connection to each other and our environment. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and is currently undertaking a digital media residency at the Fire Station Artists Studio in Dublin.

Lottie Moore

Since the beginning of last year I have been working on a research project based on the mistreatment of animals. I feel extremely passionate about animal welfare and felt I could use photography as a medium to illustrate the ways humans have taken advantage and caused such intense suffering. The human models in my images are there to enforce how inhumanely animals are treated despite their ability to feel pain, fear, loneliness, anxiety and depression. The intention of this body of work is to make viewers acknowledge and appreciate the similarities between ourselves and animals.

Yvette Watt

Yvette Watt’s art practice spans more than 20 years. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections including Parliament House, Canberra, Artbank and the Art Gallery of WA. Yvette has been actively involved in animal advocacy since the mid 1980s, and her artwork is heavily informed by her activism. Yvette is a co-editor of, and contributor to the forthcoming collection of essays titled Considering Animals: Contemporary Studies in Human-Animal Relations (Ashgate, 2010) and was commissioned to contribute an entry on ‘Animals Art and Ethics’ for the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, (Marc Bekoff ed., Greenwood Press, forthcoming).