Kirsty McIntyre is a Melbourne based artist working mainly with palette knife and oil paint on canvas, with Australian themed still life subjects, and the native birds that visit her compositions. A keen birder, each work begins with time collecting her own reference images through a long lens and foraging for the native flowers to cast her shadows, before assembling and capturing her compositions in her home studio.
Described in the Canberra Times in 2022; “McIntyre’s use of pattern is beautifully controlled. The artist’s use of an intense light suffuses the overall composition allowing each element to be clearly delineated and hold pictorial autonomy. Light also imbues a sense of McIntyre's capturing a moment in time. The beautifully random compositions filled with freely dispersed floral and other objects have a sense of delicate movement, of the transitoriness of nature and of the innate beauty in that transitoriness.”
Recently moving away from still life and tablescapes towards more natural shadowed landscape and bird portraits her work has shown the influence of chinoiserie and Rococo design, but with an Australian twist; Native birds perched amongst tumbling flora, united by delicate background shadows in a limited palette
Initially self-taught she has since had private tuition and workshops with artists, Ron Reynolds, Richard Claremont, Jenie Fawkner, Nicholas Chen, and international artists, Ed Praybe, Susan Lichtman, Jennifer Poichinski and Catherine Kehoe.
In September 2026 Kirsty held her fourth solo exhibition, “Lifelines” at Grainger gallery in the ACT.