
Dream Weavers
FIONA SMITH
Sarah Birtles Art + Advice is delighted to open 2025 with the highly-anticipated annual release from Fiona Smith. Following her immensely successful sold out exhibitions in February 2023 and 2024, this internationally-collected artist returns with a new collection of avian characters reposing in richly patterned interiors titled Stranger than Paradise.
“The collection came from a conversation I had in Paris a few weeks ago,” Fiona shared. “I was there to look at décor for future paintings and caught up with Olivier – a constant friend since we first met, working at the Pasadena hotel and restaurant in Church Point when I was just 19.
Olivier tells me how some Indian ring-necked parrots escaped from captivity and bred in the City of Light. Now, up to 20,000 of the emerald birds are sharing the parks with astonished humans.
It got me thinking about adaptability and how we can make anywhere our home, even when we seem out of place. What can be commonplace in one location, becomes exotic in another. In my paintings, all the birds are visitors who have settled in to share our spaces.”
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SARAH
BIRTLES
For over 10 years, Sarah worked in commercial and public galleries, including the MCA and Penrith Regional Gallery. In that time, it became clear to her that there was a missing link between art and art collectors.
She founded SARAH BIRTLES Art + Advice with the aim of working alongside artists and collectors to navigate the art buying process together to the benefit of all involved.
Based in the Blue Mountains, Sarah loves talking about art, discovering new artists, and introducing people to work they genuinely connect with.
At Sarah Birtles Art + Advice we aim to take the stress out of curating your art collection – no matter whether you’re a first time buyer or established collector.
When we started out, we wanted to create an alternative to buying art through intimidating city galleries or endlessly scrolling options online. We bring together personal service, great advice and a proven eye for picking the most exciting contemporary Australian artists on the emerging and established market.

FIONA
SMITH
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Fiona Smith paints birds. She was raised on the fringes of a national park in Sydney, where the wildlife was far more plentiful than willing human playmates. With no urban playgrounds nearby, her childhood centred around forging friendships with the feathered and furred creatures that strayed onto her parents’ property, set on McCarrs Creek in Sydney’s Northern Beaches.
Fiona left that idyll to study journalism at Bathurst, in the Central West region of New South Wales, and returned to Sydney to forge a career in media, becoming a prominent business reporter and columnist for the Australian Financial Review
newspaper. During that time, she studied part time at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney and also attended workshops and classes with some of Australia’s most successful contemporary artists.
Fiona now works full-time as an artist and her oil paintings primarily focus on elaborate and patterned bird works. The birds appear in interior settings, posed on furniture and objects and against vintage and antique wallpapers. The effect is to show the natural beauty of the bird while expressing something of its personality
Fiona Smith - Magpie Pastoral
Fiona Smith - Glaukopis the Barn Owl
Fiona Smith - Wisteria Magpie
Fiona Smith - Pelican Primping
Fiona Smith - Let The Wind Blow Through Your Heart, Pelican
Fiona Smith - North and South
Fiona Smith - The Whirly Bird
Fiona Smith - Plumassier
Fiona Smith - Tapissier
Fiona Smith - Jungle King Macaw
Fiona Smith - Duet The Greater Racket tailed Drongo
Fiona Smith - Fabricant
Fiona Smith - Le Menuisier
Fiona Smith - Trousseau

Phillip Edwards
The rolling hills, deep valleys and tiered waterfalls of Victoria’s West Gippsland region are where Phillip Edwards first developed his affinity with the natural environment. Now based within the vibrant Daylesford arts community, Phillip’s connection to the great outdoors is ever present in his dynamic landscape work.
“When I hike in back country, I’m totally present in a contemplative way,” he explains. “For me, my paintings capture that invisible energy behind all things… A mystical encounter with beauty.”
Having dedicated the past 30 years to his art practice, Phillip has held multiple solo shows and participated in many group exhibitions. Applying paint in multiple layers with deliberate brushstrokes and colour flows, his expressive large-scale paintings map out natural forms and take viewers on a visceral journey into the great Australian outdoors.
As a 2018 finalist of the prestigious Wynne Prize, hosted by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Phillip was awarded the Trustees Watercolour Prize. He has also been a finalist in the Calleen Art Award, Flow Contemporary Watercolour Prize and the Lester Prize for portraiture. In addition to painting, Phillip creates sculptures from timber, steel and found objects, his deep connection to nature apparent in each piece.