Art Department
MEET THE ARTISTS
We've sourced some great independent Australian Surface Designers. Welcome to the Art Department.
Bec Ng
North Melbourne, VIC
Bec’s designs begin as sketches in her notebook, which she re-draws digitally and arranges them into a pattern. Stylised and varied illustrations combined with pops of colour bring her designs together. Beck also brings pattern into the everyday through her expanding range of products under the label Fabric Drawer, with a focus on handmade and locally sourced materials where possible.
Brie Rutter
Torquay, VIC
As well as being one half of the Art X Scrubs team, Brie is also a talented maker. For our Just a Splash range, Brie designed a bright, cheeky take on Christmas in Torquay. It’s a ripper, even if she’s too modest to say so.
Brook Gossen is an artist, surface pattern designer and illustrator from Brisbane, Australia. Brook creates her vibrant artworks and designs in her home studio using paper collage, acrylic paints and digitally; sometimes all three together. Her designs are fun, fresh, bold and often filled with all the colours of the rainbow. If people smile when they view, buy or wear her work, her mission is accomplished.
Cassie is a surface pattern designer living in Melbourne, Australia. Her work reflects her love of colour and nature. All artworks begin by using hand generated media such as collage and loose ink mark making. Followed by looking at ways to incorporate the digital sphere without losing the artworks original integrity and handwriting.
Cungelella Art was founded in 2019 by Glenda McCulloch as a vehicle for sharing her culture through modern Aboriginal art. It soon expanded as a collaboration to include Glenda’s sisters-Jaunita, Dale and Cheryl.
They take inspiration from the ancient rock faces, red dirt and the spinifex covered hills of the country. Colours of the sky are painted a peachy orange at sunset and beautiful old rustic gum trees that flourish in this harsh country are also reflected through their works.
Ellen McKenna
Surrey Hills, VIC
Ellen McKenna is a Melbourne based artist and designer whose abstract work focuses on colour, balance and movement. Describing herself as a colour maximalist, Ellen’s work is bold and designed to evoke emotions like joy and happiness. Inspired by multidisciplinary design elements from the early to mid-20th Century, Ellen’s aesthetic is also shaped by her lifelong study and love of the arts. Ellen works in both digital and painterly repeat pattern design, along with acrylic paint and canvas for her fine art pieces.
Eloise Short
Katoomba, NSW
Eloise Short is an Illustrator and Textile Designer based in the beautiful Blue Mountains, Australia, where she lives with her family. Her inspiration is regularly drawn from her immediate surrounds. With a background in both Textile Design and Visual Art, Eloise’s work has been showcased in galleries and fashion and homewares ranges both locally and internationally.
Emma grew up travelling Australia with her family, visiting many Aboriginal communities. Her work reflects all that she has seen and experienced. Emma is inspired by her Aunties and Uncles who are also heavily involved in the arts and cultural sector in Australia. As a young girl, she often visited an Aboriginal Art Gallery in the town of Lockhart, where she was inspired to follow in the footsteps of those before her and to pursue her passion in art.
Fiona Budzynski
Southern Highlands, NSW
Zynska (formerly 4 leaf clover) is an Australian textile design studio producing fabrics inspired by the natural world. After a career in textile design, Fiona sought to create her own fabric range that celebrated the unique beauty of the Australian bush wildlife, flora and landscape. Fiona’s intention is to create artwork which embodies a sense of place or evoke a memory through textile design. The designs have timeless quality coupled with modern colouration.
Jess Dodd
Dunsborough WA
Jessica Dodd is a freelance Surface Pattern Designer creating from her studio ‘Little Flower Patterns’. Based in the beautiful Margaret River Region, Jess draws inspiration from the native bush, vintage flowers & decorative art. Inspired by the memory of her Nonna, Olga Hough, Jess uses hand drawn illustrations, water colours and pens to create unique patterns with an emphasis on hand crafted techniques evoking a sense of emotion in her work.
Meeri Anneliis a Finnish-Australian illustrator and textile designer, currently based in the Blue Mountains, Australia. Her work draws on the diverse and colourful nature surrounding her, with a nod to her Finnish roots.
She loves to draw and play with colour-creating patterns and original illustrations that will brighten your space.She has a BA Fine Arts from Western Sydney University, Australia, and an MA Environmental Art from (what was then called) the University ofArt & Design, Helsinki Finland. It was time spent in Helsinki, and the rest of Scandinavia, that reinforced her love of pattern, and design.
Describing herself as a new naturalist, Meeri sees her work as an illustrative ecology-that represents the aesthetically guided aspects of actual systems and natural interactions.
Shanai comes from a family that is quite arty. Growing up she watched her mum paint, learning from her way of doing things and then adding her own unique touch using symbols from her country, she uses acrylic paint and sand in most of her work. Shanai’s mum is her biggest inspiration, who learnt the ‘sand art’ technique from her late Uncle Ralph, she also uses this technique as it symbolises that connection to Mother Nature and earth. Maloga means Sand in her Yorta Yorta language.
