Art & Culture

Mandy Archibald is a prominent local photographer, artist, and community leader based in Murrurundi, New South Wales

. Deeply embedded in the Upper Hunter region's creative scene, she serves as an artistic advocate and has previously held the role of president for the Murrurundi and District Arts Council.

Creative Focus & Mediums

Archibald’s creative output spans several distinct visual styles:

• Wildlife & Nature Photography: She frequently captures local rural landscapes, the regional "Murra mists," horses, and Australian wildlife.
• Animal Portraiture: She works on commission under her professional banner, creating detailed pastel drawings and sketches of pets and animals.
• Community Storytelling: Beyond visual art, she is a deeply knowledgeable community chronicler who previously hosted a morning local history segment for seven years. Her work has been highlighted through regional initiatives, including profiles by the local Michael Reid Murrurundi gallery.

Connect with the Artist

You can explore her current portfolios, view latest commissions, or get in touch through her digital channels:

• Portfolio Updates: Check out recent pastel drawings and photos on the personal Mandy Archibald Facebook Profile.
• Photography Page: View her travel, nature, and equine galleries via Mandy Archibald Photography on Facebook.
• Professional Background: See her work history and background in animal portraiture on her Mandy Archibald LinkedIn Profile.

Jelle van den Berg is a

highly respected, Dutch-born contemporary Australian artist who works across painting, watercolours, performance, and ceramics

. He maintains close ties to Murrurundi, New South Wales, where he has worked with local art organisations and notably served as the official independent judge for the annual Murrurundi Arts Prize.

Artistic Profile & Career Highlights

• Murrurundi Connection: In addition to judging local exhibitions, he has worked as a curator for local initiatives like the "Drawing Room" in Murrurundi and the nearby Tamworth Regional Gallery.
• Background: Born in the Netherlands in 1954, he studied Painting and History of Art at the Minerva Academy in Groningen. He immigrated to Australia in the early 1980s.
• Collective Practice: Van den Berg has spent decades spearheading artist-run initiatives and collectives, serving as a co-director for Sydney's prominent Union Street Gallery and establishing the creative initiative The Drawing Room.
• Style: His artwork features a distinct lightness, moving fluidly between vibrant, colourful abstract geometries and figurative improvisations on themes. [
• Academic Leadership: He serves as the Painting Coordinator at the Faculty of Creative Arts, University of Wollongong.
• Major Collections: His pieces are held in prestigious institutional collections, including the National Gallery of Australia and the Heide Museum of Modern Art.

John Bradley is a prominent, versatile Australian landscape artist who operates a dedicated public gallery in his hometown of Murrurundi, New South Wales

. Renowned for his detailed oil paintings capturing iconic Australian vistas, historic steam locomotives, and military battle scenes, his flagship gallery is located within Murrurundi’s beautifully restored historic old Post Office.

Gallery Highlights & Offerings

Visitors to the John Bradley Art Gallery can experience a variety of art and merchandise firsthand:

• Meet the Artist: Guests can frequently see John painting live inside the spacious, light-filled rooms of the historic building.
• Original Art & Miniatures: Original oil miniature paintings are available for purchase, with prices starting from $350.
• Prints & Merchandise: The gallery stocks high-quality giclée prints, art puzzles, placemats, and other functional, art-inspired gifts.
• Educational Materials: John offers painting masterclass DVDs and online subscriptions drawing from his 40 years as a professional artist and 15 years running an art school.

Artistic Background

Born in Sydney in 1945, Bradley has spent over four decades mastering realistic Australian scenes. His work focuses heavily on atmospheric phenomena like misty mornings, sunrises, sunsets, and historic 20th-century streetscapes. He relies on Art Spectrum oil paints and utilises a meticulous dual primaries palette to handle rapidly changing light conditions across famous regions like the Blue Mountains and the Upper Hunter Valley. His artwork is highly collectable and licensed worldwide across puzzles and commercial merchandise.

NEW GALLERY SPACE NOW OPEN
Mon-Fri, 10am-3pm,
at 60 Mayne St, Murrurundi.

The Murrurundi Arts & Crafts Council is a community organisation dedicated to nurturing, encouraging and promoting creative pursuits in the Murrurundi district.

It was founded in 1994 as the Murrurundi District Arts Council, and renamed in 2017 to reflect a wider, more inclusive representation of artists and creative mediums.

It runs several annual competitions and exhibitions, including the Recognisably Murrurundi Art Prize and the Arts & Crafts Prize & Exhibition.

Its Photographic Arts Prize & Online Exhibition offers a $1,500 prize pool across categories including Landscape, Portrait, and Pets & Wildlife, plus a Best in Show award, open to photographers across the wider Upper Hunter postcode area.

The council also runs workshops for members, maintains a library and equipment-hire service, and hosts its annual Prize Opening & Awards Night at the RSL Hall on Mayne Street.

It functions as a hub for the town’s wider creative community, with local artists such as David Darcy, Fran Wachtel and Charlotte Drake-Brockman among its members and exhibitors over the years.

It is a registered NSW incorporated association, welcoming new members from across the district.

Find out more via the council’s website, or follow along on Facebook and Instagram.

David Darcy is a multi-award-winning portrait painter, photographer and author based in Murrurundi, New South Wales.

Born in the Blue Mountains, he spent 15 years as a professional photographer and author of nine bestselling books on dogs before turning to painting around 2016.

What sets him apart is that he’s almost entirely self-taught, learning to paint from YouTube tutorials in just 12 to 18 months after a lifetime behind the camera.

His portraits are drawn from a consistent theme - regional Australians doing remarkable things. "Having subjects that inspire me is incredibly important," he has said, describing his aim to represent regional Australia through the people who define it.

He set up his studio and gallery, Darcy and the Fox, on Mayne Street, and is represented locally by Michael Reid Murrurundi.

He gives back to the region’s next generation too, having visited Scone High School to walk students through his portrait process, telling them that passion, determination and the willingness to take criticism matter more than raw talent.

Darcy is a three-time Archibald Prize finalist: a finalist in 2018 for his portrait of artist Charlotte Drake-Brockman; winner of the 2019 ANZ People’s Choice Award for his portrait of Ngaanyatjarra elder Daisy Tjuparntarri Ward; and a finalist again in 2026 for his portrait of fellow artist Dale Frank.

He was also a finalist in the Shirley Hannan National Portrait Award for "Bernie and Billy - Local Heroes," his portrait of BackTrack founder Bernie Shakeshaft, shown at Bega Valley Regional Gallery.

He also won the inaugural Darling Portrait Prize’s People’s Choice award in 2020, for his portrait of Upper Hunter farmer and environmentalist Wendy Bowman, and has previously won the National Photographic Portrait Prize.

His work has also been commissioned by Parliament House for its Historic Memorials Collection.

In 2026 he opened his first solo exhibition, Self Sabotage, at Tamworth Regional Gallery - a striking shift from his photorealistic portraiture toward expressionism.

Follow his work on Instagram, or visit the studio in Murrurundi.

Debra Dawes (born 1955) is an Australian contemporary painter best known for her abstract paintings of gridlike structures and geometric patterns, as documented on Wikipedia.

Practising since the early 1980s, she is regarded as one of the leading figures in Australian abstract art - her work builds a grid, then deliberately disrupts it, producing optical effects she has described as "both mesmerising and unsettling."

She holds a Doctor of Creative Arts from the University of Wollongong, a Postgraduate Diploma in Painting from the Sydney College of the Arts, and a Diploma in Art from the Newcastle College of Advanced Education.

She went on to lecture at the Sydney College of the Arts and direct its Graduate Program, shaping a generation of Australian art students before moving to the Upper Hunter.

Alongside her partner, fellow artist Jelle van den Berg, she built a dedicated studio in Murrurundi, where she frequently lives and draws inspiration for her sensory and geometric abstract practice.

She has held over 25 solo exhibitions since 1983 - including Skin Deep at Ames Yavuz Gallery, Sydney - and more than 60 group exhibitions since 1984, in cities including Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Perth, and internationally in the Netherlands, Italy and Hong Kong.

Notable works include Starlite (1993) and Unfinished Business (1998), both held in major public collections.

Her work is held in national, state and private collections around Australia, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the National Gallery of Victoria.

See more of her practice on her website, or read her full profile via Ocula.

Anita Faulkner runs "ArtOnly by Anita" from Mayne Street, Murrurundi, working as a portrait and illustration artist.

She paints by hand for detailed portrait work, and turns to airbrush for large-scale mural pieces - a combination that lets her move between fine detail and big, bold public art.

She takes commissions for portraits, pet and animal portraits and weddings, and shares her skills locally through private and group art tuition.

She is also a prize-winning exhibitor, having taken out 1st Prize in the 35th Annual Easter Art Prize in Port Macquarie and been Highly Commended in the D’Arcy Doyle Art Awards in Mudgeeraba, QLD.

Her most visible community work is the murals on the water tanks at the redeveloped Murrurundi Wilson Memorial Hospital - a design inspired by artwork from students at Murrurundi Public School, turning a piece of hospital infrastructure into a genuinely local, community-made landmark.

Follow her work on Instagram or Facebook.

Alison Hodges studied at Newcastle University, earning an Associate Diploma of Creative Arts and Crafts around 1989.

She has been part of Murrurundi’s creative circle ever since, regularly showing work at community venues in town including Haydon Hall and God’s Waiting Room.

Her paintings often turn to the buildings and landscapes closest to home - the region’s historic cottages, homesteads and countryside - captured in works such as "Glenoak Cottage."

She has exhibited alongside fellow regional artists Sue Adams, Teresa Byrne, Hilary Nicol and Fran Wachtel, with recent work featured in the group exhibition "Up the Garden Path" at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, running through March 2026 - a show framed around Upper Hunter artists drawn together by a shared love of their region, in the tradition of artist communities like the Heidelberg School and Hill End.

Hanna Kay is an internationally established artist born in Israel in 1947, trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.

She lived a decade in New York before settling in Australia in 1990, and moved to the Upper Hunter in 2000.

Her work explores dislocation, exile, heritage and migration, often drawing on the Murrurundi landscape itself, centred on recurring motifs of grasses and rocks - frequently rendered at an unusually large, panoramic scale, with single oil-on-paper works stretching many metres wide.

She holds a PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Sydney, for which her research project "Shifting Horizons" took her to China, resulting in touring exhibitions across Australia and China.

In 2012 she travelled to Beijing with fellow artists Suzanne Archer and Sarah Tomasetti, exhibiting at the Beijing Art Space in a show opened by the Australian High Commissioner.

Her touring exhibition Undertow, commissioned by Maitland Regional Art Gallery to explore Jewish migration to Australia, toured regional galleries and museums for four years from 2009.

Her work is held in major collections including the National Gallery of Victoria and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

See more of her work on her website or Instagram, or read her artist’s statement via the Janet Clayton Gallery.

Pearl Red Moon is a mixed-media and textile artist based in Murrurundi, working across stencil printing, hand embroidery, fabric manipulation and quilting.

Born in Whangarei, New Zealand, she trained as a fashion-industry pattern maker before emigrating to Australia in 1986.

Her own style blends "hippie, bohemian, tribal/oriental/eastern, alternative arty with a bit of goth" - artistic styling built for individual, curvy, creative bodies rather than commercial fashion conventions.

Working in patchwork, hand and machine stitching, drawing, stencilling and paint and ink, she builds her pieces up in layers, working spontaneously and with "no rules," on garments that can take many hours or weeks to complete.

She runs "Boho Banjo art to wear," creating loose, comfortable, individually expressive clothing, much of it from upcycled and salvaged materials.

Her solo exhibition "Women Being," shown at Timeless Textiles Gallery in Newcastle, brought together her art-to-wear garments and 3D fabric sculptures - all one-off pieces designed and stitched in her rural NSW studio.

Her exhibition "Garb Age," shown at the Old Tattersalls Hotel in Murrurundi in 2023, featured fabrics and fibres rescued from the waste stream - mostly used clothes, homewares and unused remnants donated to thrift shops.

In December 2024 she showed "Women Are Women (not men)," a series of paintings celebrating the female figure, also at the Old Tattersalls Hotel - an exhibition she dedicated to Australian equality campaigner Sall Grover, committing 20% of sales toward her legal costs.

In 2023 she was selected as one of 40 finalists in the Australian Wearable Art Festival on the Gold Coast, with an entry titled "Wedding Gown for a Woman to Marry Her Garden," built on a custom rigid frame rather than conventional cloth construction.

In April 2026 she won Best Use of Colour at the Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne - marking the event’s 20th anniversary and drawn from over 1,000 national submissions - for her piece "Living Luminously in the Garden of Black Flowers," which was also a finalist alongside a second submitted work.

She shares her skills locally too, having given sustainability and upcycling talks at Murrurundi Library, and over 20 years has taught classes by invitation across Australia and internationally, including in New Zealand, Canada and the USA.

See more of her work and writing on her website.

Michael Reid Murrurundi is a contemporary art gallery and part of the wider Michael Reid gallery network, which also includes locations in Sydney, Berlin and the Southern Highlands.

It occupies Bobadil House, a late Georgian residence built in the 1840s, set within botanical gardens on the edge of town.

Established in 2006, the gallery presents a rolling calendar of exhibitions by emerging and established contemporary Australian artists - among them David Darcy, whose work is also shown in the Directory’s own Arts & Culture listings.

Recent shows have included solo exhibitions by artists such as Brooke Dalton, Irene Crowe, Tara Price and Conor Knight, alongside larger group exhibitions like "Pied-à-terre," featuring more than 30 artists.

It also partners with Country Style Magazine on themed group exhibitions, bringing a national audience’s eye to work made in and around Murrurundi.

Alongside the exhibition program, the gallery runs a Concept Store of handcrafted goods and Australian design, and a kiosk serving fine food and coffee, making it as much a destination as a gallery.

Open Wednesday to Sunday, from 9:30am to 4pm.

Follow along on Instagram or visit the gallery’s website.

Peter Norvill is the owner/operator of Rock Dhu, a sheep and cattle property 25km north-east of Murrurundi in the Upper Hunter Valley, NSW, worked by the Norvill family for generations.

Alongside grazing, Peter is a storyteller, entrepreneur, philanthropist and aviator - in 1988 he became the first Australian-born pilot to fly solo around the world in a fixed-wing aircraft, an achievement commemorated on a plaque at Murrurundi’s Literary Institute museum.

He was the original patron of and motivating force behind establishing the Norvill Art Prize, a biennial art competition now administered by the Murrurundi Arts Council.

It began in 2000 with a $10,000 cash prize for the winner, increased in 2012 to a $15,000 first prize - one of the largest privately funded landscape art prizes in Australia.

For around two decades he has worked toward preserving his record-setting Cessna for the public, reflecting a broader commitment to sharing the town’s history alongside its art.

He was painted by local artist Rodney Swansborough, whose portrait of Peter can be seen on Upstairs Art.

Visit his website for more.

Renate du Plessis is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist based in the Murrurundi/Scone area, specialising in detailed wildlife and animal portraiture.

Originally from South Africa, she relocated to Australia in 2017, and after two decades in the thoroughbred industry became a full-time artist in September 2024.

Her signature style leaves out the background entirely, creating an intimate, soulful focus on the animal or subject itself, often worked in fine coloured pencil and watercolour detail; more recently she has expanded into still life, as in her sardine-themed "Brine & Shine."

Her gallery and working studio at 144 Mayne Street, Murrurundi, shows lifelike charcoal and pencil sketches of native flora and fauna and farm life, alongside limited-edition Giclée prints and commissions.

She’s a regular presence at local community events, exhibiting at the Scone Grammar School FETE and the Scone Arts & Crafts Inc membership exhibition, and showing work at Winmark Winery Art Gallery in Broke.

Since going full-time she has picked up a run of awards, including the Potter Macqueen Prize (Scone Art Competition, 2025), second place for "Brine & Shine" in Still Life at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, the Major Prize and People’s Choice Award at the Bendemeer Art Show for "Faithful Gaze," and the Hall & Wilcox Newcastle Emerging Artist Award.

See more on her website, or follow her on Instagram and Facebook.

Jo Shand is a contemporary regional Australian painter and multidisciplinary artist based between Murrurundi and Newcastle, NSW.

A graduate of the National Art School, her raw and direct work explores working-class life, regional customs, memory and the rugged beauty of the Australian landscape - rendered, as she has described it, with "the dark, the deranged, the joyous and the quirky" all present in one unsettling beauty.

She works in oil painting and op-shop-inspired ceramics - hand-formed earthenware and wall pieces that riff on vintage Australiana, alongside subjects like demolition derbies, roadside objects, resilient regional flora and vernacular architecture.

She has exhibited widely across NSW, including recent group shows such as "The Beauty & The Terror" at WAYOUT Artspace in Kandos, and showcases at Tortuga Studios, Newcastle Art Space and Carriageworks.

She is a multi-time finalist in prominent regional and metropolitan art awards, including the Mosman Art Prize, North Sydney Art Prize and the Salon de Refusés at the S.H. Ervin Gallery.

Follow her work on Instagram.

Eduardo Santos is a Brazilian-born contemporary artist, born in 1974 in Fortaleza, who grew up in northern Brazil near the Amazon, influenced by his Indigenous grandfather, a potter and fisherman.

He studied at St Martins College of the Arts in London, then spent two years at the Instituto Europeo de Design in Madrid, before working as a photographer in Marrakesh and Ibiza.

From 2000 to 2007 he ran Santos & Mowen, a design company in London with his longtime creative partner Jason Mowen - a friendship that has followed him to Murrurundi, where Mowen has since settled and displays Santos’s paintings in his own local home.

He works across two mediums: chromogenic landscape photography compressed into abstracted horizon lines, and textural oils on canvas built up from sand, earth, paint and varnish.

He has held solo exhibitions including "Memories of Colours" (NKN Gallery, 2018), "Lucena" (Blockprojects, 2019) and "SAUDADES" (Blockprojects, 2021), alongside "Intermezzo," shown through Otomys and at his own Murrurundi studio.

His work is held in private collections internationally, including Sydney, Melbourne, New York, Los Angeles, Berlin and Madrid, as documented via Otomys.

His studio on Mayne Street, Murrurundi, is open on weekends, inviting locals and visitors to experience his work in person.

See more via his website or Instagram.

Rodney Swansborough is an Australian tonal artist, educator, and community leader based in Murrurundi, New South Wales, renowned for his expertise in the traditional chiaroscuro method. He serves as the artist-in-residence and co-owner of Upstairs Art Gallery & Studios alongside his wife, fellow artist Pearl Red Moon.

Artistic Style and Technique

• The Chiaroscuro Method: Heavily inspired by old masters like Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, Swansborough's signature technique focuses on the dramatic interplay of light and shadow to build three-dimensional depth.
• Medium Selection: He primarily works on brown kraft paper or composite MDF boards. By utilizing the natural brown surface as a built-in midtone, he uses black charcoal for shadows and white chalk exclusively for highlights and reflections—leaving absolutely no white paper exposed.
• Subject Focus: His chiaroscuro works are most prominently featured in his intimate portraiture and figure/nude studies.
• Pastel Impressionism: Beyond high-contrast charcoal work, Swansborough is also recognized for his vibrant, colorful pastel impressionism and mixed-media series, such as his Ancient of Days collection.

Community and Professional Background

Swansborough has built a diverse profile inside and outside of the arts community in the Upper Hunter region:

• Art Educator: He regularly runs regional drawing workshops and masterclasses teaching his specialized tonal framework to students.
• Community Leadership: He has served as the Vice-President of the Murrurundi & District Arts Council, the Chairman of the Murrurundi Community Leaders Forum, and the Chairman of the Wilson Memorial Hospital Local Health Committee.
• Emergency Services: Outside of his creative endeavours, he is a long-standing Deputy Captain and retained firefighter for Fire & Rescue NSW.
• Prior Career: Before committing fully to his art studio in 2007, he worked as the Head Teacher of Sociology at Canberra Grammar School.

The Lube Bay Gallery is photographer John Turton’s collection of images, built up from a lifelong passion for photography - events, portraits, sports, landscapes and an enduring interest in Kustom Kulture: the music, fashion, cars and bikes of the scene.

His studio and gallery are set up in the old lube bay of a disused petrol station in Murrurundi - a move to a small town that gave him the space to photograph clients, make art, and show and sell his work.

His approach favours getting it right in-camera: subjects are captured with minimal editing, with Lightroom used mainly for colour, black-and-white conversion or cropping, rather than heavy digital manipulation.

He describes it as "a privilege to be able to walk this earth" and photograph it, ranging across landscapes, action events, portraiture, textured details and abstract patterns, alongside his Kustom Kulture work.

Combining photography with writing for automotive publications, John offers a selection of images that didn’t make it to print, or that he simply captured for their artistic appeal - the details, the people, the events.

The gallery features standalone images as well as themed collections, with new work added regularly.

See more on the gallery’s website, or follow along on Instagram and Facebook.

Jenny Vaughan is an established local artist and prominent community arts figure based in the Upper Hunter region, closely tied to the town of Murrurundi.

She has served as President of the Murrurundi Arts and Crafts Council (MACC), leading local cultural exhibitions and organising the town’s key creative showcases.

She won the inaugural Murrurundi Arts & Crafts Prize for her distinct creative work.

Her studio or exhibition space is a frequent highlight on the popular Upper Hunter Arts Trail Weekend, where visitors can view her art directly.

She’s a hands-on participant in the region’s craft community too - in 2024 she took part in the "Not HARD HATS" millinery workshop at Timor Tennis Club, learning hat-making under professional milliner Jo Barr, supported by the Country Arts Support Program.

She regularly participates in regional craft programs funded by Arts Upper Hunter, including specialised textile and hat-making initiatives utilising community support networks.

Fran Wachtel is a Murrurundi-based sculptor who has spent over 40 years working across clay, bronze, oils and drawing, with sculpture becoming her primary focus over the past two decades.

What sets her work apart is a commitment to upcycling: she transforms old sheds, corrugated iron roofing and tin cans - sourced from places like Murrurundi Bodyworks, old caravans and roofing offcuts - into whimsical animals, landscapes and one-off sculptural pieces.

Her creative partnership with fellow artist Charlotte Drake-Brockman began around 1979-80, when the two met while working as census takers in the town - a collaboration that has now spanned more than four decades.

Together they co-founded Chicken in the Window, a gallery and studio in Murrurundi dedicated to recycled tin work, now a well-known local attraction in its own right.

Her corten steel sculpture at Murrurundi’s northern gateway depicts two farmers sitting on a fence, looking out over the surrounding farmland.

Together with Drake-Brockman, she also crafted the corten steel sign at Murrurundi’s southern gateway, depicting sheep leaping over the town name while being herded by a cattle dog.

The pair have collaborated on numerous exhibitions over the decades, including a corrugated-iron mural at the Visitor Centre in Merriwa celebrating the district’s agricultural history.

Wachtel has also been an artist in residence at LiddellWORKS, and her recent work features in the group exhibition "Up the Garden Path" at Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre, running through March 2026.