Still Waiting For The Fairies

My childhood memories are filled with happy times in the forest in western New South Wales with my artist grandparents searching for fairies and fairy rings (mushrooms in a circle where the fairies dance at night). We would spend hours just walking around and searching in nature.

“Still Waiting For The Fairies” is a self-portrait depicting me sitting under one of the mushrooms, pencil and sketch pad in hand, waiting to capture a glimpse of my elusive fairies dancing. A fairy sits secretly on a mushroom behind me – waiting to fly away should I look her way.

The artwork began as ink airbrushed onto the canvas but I wanted to give a dream-like quality to this piece by enhancing it with acrylic and then creating a background indicative of the old masters to evoke a feeling of whimsy and magick.

Follow

I come from a long line of artists, it's in my blood... I started drawing as a child and have not stopped since.

I am an artist, illustrator and qualified graphic designer specialising in acrylics, illustration, mixed media, digital and airbrushed art.

All my life I have drawn and painted and together with my grandparents who were both artists in country NSW. We spent many hours chasing butterflies and fairies, picking up paperbark and singing, painting and drawing to our hearts content.

Although I have trauma from my childhood from a very personal level, I also have a love of the ridiculous and whimsical. My favourite art genre is surrealism so when I am creating my pieces I like to throw in little curve balls to make myself remember that life should never be too serious.

In 2025 after my daughter went to Canada to chase her dreams and our darling dog Nelson died, I have been exploring the question of time and have created a series called "Timeless" which not only questions if time is linear or something more, it also shows my love of manipulating colour and throwing in items to ask the viewer to question their own view on the subject. The series was featured in the 2025 ArtBeat exhibition at both Robina Hospital and GCUH on the Gold Coast. One of the paintings "Time" won the competition, with another "Journey" winning the People's Choice Award.

I am also very proud to say that I won the ArtBeat Competition on the Gold Coast 2024 and 2025, have been published three times, been a finalist in many Australian and International competitions and have exhibited at some of these. One of my exhibitions was called Two Worlds Converging with my sister Sharen-Lee McLachlan at Pine Ridge Gallery, Redcliffe.

From 2022 I have been collaborating with author Theresa Wakefield to create a series of three beautiful children's books with another on the way.

I hope that you enjoy my art as much as I enjoy creating it.