About Sharyn

As a professional textile artist, I’ve enjoyed working in the medium of surface design for over 25 years.  I’ve experimented with many different techniques including painting, dyeing, felting, embroidery and paper craft. I’ve also been luck enough to combine my textile practice with ongoing studies and education, and more recently with teaching.

I work from my studio in Brookfield, Queensland – in between travelling nationally and internationally to teach, study and exhibit.

My source material is photography and my inspiration – the colours and textures of the landscape. Rarely will you find me without my camera and macro lens, capturing not only the world as we see it, but the intricacies of natures textures and tones. I’ve found that the cultural aspects of my own travel experiences inform my design ideas. Combining dyeing, resists and discharge, printing and mixed media techniques with hand and machine stitching, I enjoy manipulating, colouring and embellishing the textile surface to create artworks which imbue a sense of spirit.

Textiles, in some form have been a part of my life since childhood: making dolls clothes, teenage creations, printing and stitching children’s clothes and toys (for sale) and embroidery and embellishments as wearables and items for interior decoration. Since 1988, I’ve been teaching textile related workshops, after completing an Associate Diploma in Visual Arts, majoring in Textile Design. I have judged the major quilt shows of the Queensland, New South Wales, Victorian, Western Australian and Northern Territory Quilters Guilds, and juried several major national textile competitions and exhibitions.

In 2001, I was awarded the Churchill Fellowship and travelled to Japan, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and France, to study the transfer processes of photographic images to textiles, including computer manipulated and generated imagery. This study of the many different transfer processes enabled me to experiment with combining my photographic images and my technical processes. Overseas study, and attendance at the bi-annual Surface Design Association (USA) Conference, (in 2003 and 2005), allowed me to keep abreast of new developments in the fields of Digital Printing and Dye Processes. In 2003 I was awarded the Quilters Guild Scholarship (NSW)  for study in the United States and in 2006 was selected as the feature artist for Bernina Australia (sewing machines) – travelling and exhibiting my work nationally while representing the company. In 2010, as Featured Artist at the Expertise Events Craft & Quilt Fairs, I again travelled nationally exhibiting artworks, while demonstrating my materials and processes.

I enjoy being involved in many of the leading textile and quilting associations in Australia as I believe that textile art and surface design deserves to be promoted, and those who see themselves as textile artists (whether as professionals or hobbyists) need the opportunity to learn, grow, discover and commune with each other.

I’m continually on the look out for new opportunities to expand my techniques and processes and receive great joy in participating in solo as well as group exhibitions.

For more information, please read more about my history or view my Curriculum Vitae for details of my achievements.