Julie Hickson works in her home studio in Newport NSW Australia. With a background in television production in live television & outside broadcast featuring live music she worked for 20 years in production in both Australia and Europe. Having formerly completed a Bachelor of Mass Communication at Macquarie University and concurrent studies in Fine Arts at Sydney University she made the commitment to painting full-time in 2008. 

This recent collection of work continues to explore the amazing forms in the Australian bush and its once prolific & now threatened biodiversity.

I have always been obsessed with line and it is on the forms of these plants, their buds, flowers and seed pods that I focus. I call this collection my ‘abstract botanicals’ where I continue to explore ideas which sprouted from my Australian PlantBank Residency in 2018.

The lines and forms that these images evoke in close-up are somehow distinctively Australian and couldn’t come from anywhere else. I’ve become increasingly interested in these interior landscapes.

My technique continues to push the boundaries of hand cut stencils, the result being a cross-pollination of printmaking and painting. Up to this point its the best way I can make something both graphic and relevant to this uniquely Australian visual journey.