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.

Photo: Louie Douvis

Shop bird paintings by Fiona Smith…