Conversations with the artist (Desert Journeys - Desert Calling)

About Annabel Murray

Registered landscape architect based on Gundungurra Country, in the Southern Highlands NSW.
Design and systems-thinking consultant, supporting Connection to Country, facilitating climate change adaptation, mitigation and encouraging regenerative land management. Educated in landscape architecture at UNSW, visual art at City Art Institute, Sydney, and New York Studio School's International residential studio. My combined experience in visual art, landscape architecture and a practice of lifelong learning and listening, informs creative transformations.

About the artist

After a lifetime of designing and building houses on Lower North Shore and teaching architecture at Sydney University and years of running Time for Drawing workshops in Australia and internationally, Rena ventured into Australian desert, where in 2016, Idris Murphy introduced her to Fowlers Gap near Broken Hill. Forever grateful she has been returning there every year to run Desert Calling Art Camps, sharing with others her growing love of this country. Spending time alone or with a few painting friends she likes walking and exploring the quartz ridges and painting in the dry river beds where changing colours, moving shadows and the sound of birdsong and wind grow into vibrating with life symphony, healing the senses and nourishing the heart.