The third year Bachelor of Fine Arts student at the University of Newcastle is an abstract landscape artist. 

“When I was in high school I used to draw, I hadn’t experimented enough to do anything else,” Hellier said.

“At the beginning of last year we had an abstract project, we had to do something abstract.

“I just loved it and I have just kept going with it.”

The works draw on imagination and feelings about the land, which she describes as “abstract expressionism”.

“I do name some of them after particular places, even if I haven’t drawn it or painted it from a particular place,” she said. 

A painting which was recently exhibited at Watt Space titled Glenrock Gums was named so because the work made the artist think of the location.

Having grown up on the coast, Hellier said some of her work held an intrigue with the desert.  

“I haven’t actually spent that much time in the desert, but what I am painting is how I imagine it would be,” she said.

“I’ve been to Broken Hill and I just loved it. It’s so different and a complete other world.” 

The work is gestural and the artist takes inspiration from the likes of Elisabeth Cummings, James Drinkwater, Idris Murphy. 

In 2015, with the encouragement of her teachers, Hellier learnt to use oil paint. This has also changed her work. 

“When I first started I loved the thickness and the body of oil paint,” she said.

“But now I have experimented with medium and I’ve moved on to using more of a the medium and almost using it more like watercolour, to get more transparent colours.

“My paintings have changed, the work should influence the medium, not the other way around.

“It’s all discovering and experimenting.” 

Hellier will graduate this year, and may undertake an honours year.  But in the meantime, she is set to move into a studio to share space with professional artists and focus on painting.