CROSSING PATHS: A GALLERY EXCHANGE
Exhibition Dates: May 21st - 31st
Opening Drinks: Friday May 23rd 6pm
Business Hours: Wednesday - Friday 10am - 4pm, Saturday 10am - 2pm.
Exhibiting Artists: Joan Blond, Fiona Chandler, Katie Firth, Kirsty Gautheron, Amanda Mahony, Sarah Montgomery, Marilou Palazon, Marie Schlederer, Michelle Van Eimeren, Alison Werbeloff, David Wiggs.
The Corner Store Gallery in Orange, and Sydney Road Gallery proudly present a collaborative gallery swap, bridging the creative energy of city and regional artists. This exchange showcases a curated selection of contemporary works, offering new audiences the opportunity to engage with diverse artistic voices from both communities.
By sharing exhibition spaces, the galleries celebrate their shared commitment to fostering artistic connections and expanding the reach of Australian artists. From evocative paintings to intricate mixed-media pieces, this collection highlights the unique styles and perspectives that define each gallery’s creative community.
This partnership reflects a mutual passion for supporting artists and bringing fresh, dynamic exhibitions to both Orange and Sydney, strengthening the cultural dialogue between regional and urban art scenes.
Joan Blond
After working in the legal profession for 25 years Joan Blond has returned to her first love of painting. Joan is an abstract expressionist and contemporary artist who lived in the Yarra Valley, Victoria for over 20 years, and now lives near the ocean at Phillip Island, Victoria.
Mostly self-taught, Joan’s creative side was nurtured by her mother who constantly shared her love of drawing & painting. Joan loves painting generous blocks of colour and her style is vibrantly expressionistic, often incorporating energetic line work and she loves dots to add texture. Joan mostly paints using acrylics with substance which add texture to her work and at times works with oil paint. She also loves experimenting with different mediums & washes.
Joan works from her home studio at Phillip Island in Victoria and is creatively motivated by the location and the relaxed atmosphere it offers. Joan also takes many cues from contemporary design and her love of interior design. She loves working with homeowners and designers looking for paintings with a custom colour scheme.
Joan has exhibited extensively, and her works are held by private collectors throughout Australia, New Zealand, USA, Canada, London, Germany, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Spain, Ireland, New Zealand and recently Poland.
Joan’s work has been featured in popular magazines such as Home Beautiful, House & Garden and Art Edit and in 2018 featured on the TV series “The Block” and had a feature on Interiors Addict.
Fiona Chandler
Fiona Chandler, an Australian watercolour artist, masterfully navigates the delicate interplay between abstraction and landscape, capturing a sense of nature’s forms with exceptional detail. With eight solo exhibitions to her name and more than 60 group shows and several residencies Chandler champions the often-overlooked medium of watercolour, using its translucence and fluidity to evoke the shifting essence of the natural world. Her work resonates deeply with both national and international collectors, who are drawn to her ability to suspend memory in movement and atmosphere.
In the gallery setting, Chandler’s paintings serve as points of quiet connection. Her art invites viewers to move from solitary contemplation into shared conversation, gathering around her pieces often sharing memories. Aiming to invite others into an sometimes exclusive world of art the most often heard phrase – that’s not watercolour.building upon layers Chandlers work take time – quickly disappearing into private collections.
The series for cornerstore gallery is derived from conversations and roadtrips. The elements of landscape recalling memories of chatting with loved ones
Katie Firth
Katie Firth is an emerging Australian artist based in Sydney, whose work is a reflection of her keen observations of the everyday. Whether capturing the figure in context, the landscape, or a fusion of both, her paintings are grounded in a deep curiosity about the world around her.
Katie’s practice is defined by her exaggerated palette, and a considered focus on structure and composition. She is drawn to the quiet beauty found in ordinary moments—a shift in light on a familiar surface, the unexpected horizon line of a suburban street, or the subtle interplay of forms within a composition. These fleeting impressions become the catalyst for her work, compelling her to translate them into oil paintings.
Her approach is immediate and intuitive, informed by a passion for drawing and a fascination with the shifting nature of light and line. Through bold brushstrokes and a process of deconstruction, she explores how elements within a scene interact, investigating their relationships and reimagining them through paint. In doing so, she creates works that not only depict the world but also invite viewers to see the extraordinary within the everyday.
Katie holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the National Art School and Diploma in Advance Art & Design at Box Hill TAFE, Melbourne.
She was a finalist at the Salon des Refusés at the S.H. Ervin Gallery in 2023 and 2024. She regularly exhibits in Sydney and her work is held in private collections around Australia.
Kirsty Gautheron
Kirsty Gautheron is a landscape artist based near the coast in Sydney, whose work is deeply informed by her upbringing in rural Australia. Her paintings reflect a profound connection to the natural world, capturing the expansive and often remote places that evoke a sense of peace and spiritual freedom. Memory, emotion, and sensory experience are integral to her creative process, resulting in works that express joy, reverence, and respect for nature’s many forms.
Immersing herself in the environments she paints, Kirsty engages all her senses—sketching, taking notes, and photographing the subtle shifts of light and atmosphere. These field studies become the foundation of her studio practice, where she transforms memory and experience into textured, emotive compositions.
Working primarily in acrylics, she builds her paintings through multiple layers of paint and mediums, applied with brushes, palette knives, and handmade tools. This process creates a rich interplay of color, texture, and depth, inviting the viewer into a landscape that feels both familiar and inviting.
Kirsty has held solo exhibitions in Sydney galleries, exhibited at major art fairs in Sydney, and participated in numerous group shows across regional and metropolitan galleries. Kirsty is represented by Sydney Road Gallery. Her work is also sold through The Corner Store Gallery, Satch & Co Gallery, and Brush Artists. She has been a finalist in the Hornsby Art Prize, Lethbridge Landscape Prize, Lethbridge Landscape Prize (Salon), Doyles Art Award, Soho Art Prize, and the Corner Store Everyday group show. Additionally, she was selected for an Australian landscape artist residency. Her paintings are held in private collections in Australia, New Zealand, France, the UK, and the US.
Amanda Mahony
Amanda Mahony is a multimedia artist based in Eora/Sydney. Her abstract landscapes create a quiet space for contemplation - an opportunity to reflect on the emotional connection between place and felt experiences.
Her process-based practice is inspired by her direct experiences in nature. Using acrylics, impasto mediums and oil sticks, Amanda employs sgraffito, sanding, scoring and scraping away layers to reveal underpainting, mirroring erosion and growth in nature. She also builds depth through layers of translucent glazes.
Amanda’s work reflects observations of the bush, sky, water and mountains, focusing on colour and texture to convey the feeling of being in those environments. Amanda's process is iterative, with canvases evolving over time, reflecting the gradual changes found in the natural world.
Amanda is a 2023 BFA graduate of the National Art School. Her studies are complemented by training in traditional and contemporary oil and mixed media techniques at the Milan Art Institute in Arizona USA, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Media from Macquarie University.
Sarah Montgomery
Sarah Montgomery is a printmaker whose work explores the layered relationships between people and their environments, delving into themes of belonging, identity, and place. Her practice is rooted in an ongoing response to the subtle connections and quiet distances that shape human experience.
In a world often defined by busyness, Sarah values the importance of slowing down. Her creative process begins with simple acts of observation, noticing patterns in nature, or being inspired by a lyric in a song. These small, mindful moments become the foundation for her visual language, taking form through marks, textures, and layered imagery.
Her work frequently draws from personal and inherited objects, such as vintage sewing books from her grandmother or keepsakes adorned with embroidered pockets. These elements carry emotional weight and serve as touchstones, grounding her imagery in a tactile sense of memory and place. Recurring motifs—windows that open to distant views, boats navigating stormy seas, or the shifting shadows cast by clouds—evoke both introspection and exploration.
Through printmaking, Sarah creates space for reflection, using the medium to map the emotional and physical landscapes that connect us to home, history, and the everyday.
Marilou Palazon
Marilou Palazon is a contemporary Australian artist who has been painting large-scale botanicals, Australian Birds, and water themes for over 20 years. She treats them more like dramatic landscapes — exploring textures, ranges, light play and folds.
Choosing to eliminate a “feminine” reference, Palazon instead emphasises the theatrical and sculptural play of form in a contemporary and monumental scale. Adopting a realistic style, Palazon employs expressive and loose brushwork and unfinished areas that allow the viewer to fall into the work and to travel across the surface. Yet, within her love of realism, there is no desire for hyper-realism — not needing to explain every detail instead, keeping the surface texture full of painterly brush and glaze work. Ragged markings are used to lift the energy of the piece, rather than the stillness and precision of a still life.
Palazon acknowledges layered emotional and historical content for water and bathers, a long recognised passion in art, from Renaissance to Impressionist masters or classical platforms. Exploring universal themes of beauty, time, fragility, life, death, decay and birth. “Presently, the world is an unforgiving place, a society on edge. My need for simple pleasures and to refocus on a subject as simple as swimmers, of figures in water- the water being just what it is- cleansing and refreshing. Alternatively to me its mass and seductive darker depths have always been representative of the unconscious- the greater unknown.”
Marilou is a graduate of COFA, UNSW, Sydney and holds a degree and Graduate diploma in Visual Arts. She lives on the North Shore , Sydney with her family.
Marie Schlederer
As a Colour Channeler, an Energy-Shift Artist and a Chroma Therapist, I feel a deep connection with colours, especially the beautification, musical and healing powers they bring to my life. They radiate a life force of their own and I feel honoured to have a gift, which allows the various light codes, serene sounds, wavelengths & the colour-wheel of emotions to work through me. My art making process is composed in layers: concealing & revealing past marks, overlapping transparent shapes, embracing vibrational guidance and using my intuition to tell visual stories – each piece emitting with it’s own unique resonance. While marks are lucid, fluid & organic, the art is full of purpose.
We cannot live without colour.
Colour is energy, a life force, nature shows us this continually day and night in the sunrise and sunset.
Colour can make our heart beat faster or touch the soul.
We all have a favourite.
Building up transparent layers of luminous oil colour and organic abstract shapes, creating a visual story is the essence of Marie Schlederer’s artworks.
While marks are lucid, fluid and organic, their purpose is to make art works that are limitless and forever giving pleasure, captivating many of our senses, not just our eyes.
“The process and creation of art for me is an emotional, spiritual, physical and chemical reaction to my vibrational being” – Marie Schlederer
Michelle Van Eimeren
Michelle Van Eimeren is an emerging Australian artist based in Robertson, NSW, Her work explores the intersection of nature, memory, and the human experience., driven by an intuitive exploration of materials and processes to understand the world through a diverse range of mediums, including painting, drawing, ceramics, and printmaking. A deep reverence for nature infuses Michelle’s abstract paintings, through her love and knowledge of colour and as a visual distillation of the seasonal, locally foraged plant matter, used for the ecological contact printing process on paper and silk.
Michelle holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from the National Art School, a Diploma and Advanced Diploma of Visual Art from Meadowbank TAFE, an Executive Certificate in Event Management from UTS, and a Certificate III in Commercial Floral Design. The artists diverse background informs their unique artistic practice.
Michelle has a background as a television presenter in Manila, Philippines with ABS- CBN and GMA-7. During this time, she worked with ceramics, participated in group exhibitions,and organised international artist workshops.. Upon her return to Australia, Michelle undertook an executive event management course at UTS and certificate III in Commercial Floral Design, later owning and managing a floral design studio for weddings and events for 9 years.
Michelle has been a finalist in the 2019 Tafe NSW Art Prize, 2019 SWAP Sustainable Waste Art Prize, 2018 John Copes Portrait Prize, 2018 Pirtek Still Life Prize, and the 2018 Wingecarribee Drawing Prize. has showcased her work in group exhibitions at Sydney Road Gallery, CBD Gallery, the National Art School, and is held in private collections throughout Australia.
Alison Werbeloff
Alison is a Sydney based fine artist who graduated from East Sydney Technical College in Dress Design and Graphic Design. She began working as a textile designer in a very creative rag trade studio (14 years) but eventually abandoned this career to devote herself to painting. Having won a Scholarship at Julian Ashton Art School in The Rocks, her first exhibit came in 2007 at The Mechanics School of Arts in Pitt St with following exhibitions, including Artists & Craftsmen of Pittwater Art Shows and a 2024 1st Prize win in the Rotary Art Show (Northern Beaches). She has also been a finalist and placed in recent Sydney based Prizes.
Ali is a representational oil painter using traditional techniques and methods, slowly bringing her subjects to life with layers of paint and glazes. Her recent subjects have been Northern Beaches landscapes and figures. She paints realistic nostalgic scenes of beach holidays and old postcard-like memories by weaving a tapestry in oil paint of escapism set on a backdrop of Sydney’s Northern Beaches. Her love affair with the beach and ocean is a constant inspiration and flows throughout her paintings.
David Wiggs
David is a Sydney based Artist with a place at North head National park at the entrance of Sydney harbour. His Artworks are produced in the Landscape. He has spent his life working with and in nature. In the Bush and in the Water. A Surfer and Horticulturist. He sees the places he paints and draws from as stages where life plays out in front of him. “The beach is a theatre where joy and drama exist together. Where conditions are constantly changing and the difference between pleasure and pain is a moment in time.