Simone Hale is an emerging contemporary artist working from a rambling, 150-year-old house in the beautiful New England town of Armidale, NSW. Simone began drawing and painting from a background in graphic design, having worked in Australia and the U.K. as a magazine design and layout artist. While raising her family, she ran a small Illustration business of her designs, selling cards, wrapping paper and other stationery items from a collective store in Armidale and via an online shop. Simone is a self-taught painter who loves to inspire creativity in others, has taught art to kids, and works part-time as a Gallery Assistant at the New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM). She has been commissioned and sold many previous creations from lino prints to oil paintings on board – and has recently started contributing to group shows, including the following:
SOHO Studio Art Prize – 150 Edgecliff Road, Woollahra, NSW, – 6 March – 20 March, 2024
Group Exhibition – The Everyday – The Corner Store Gallery, Orange, NSW – July 19 – July 29, 2023
Fifty Squared Art Prize – Brunswick Street Gallery, Fitzroy, Victoria – 24 June – 7 July, 2023
Group Exhibition – Illustrating Armidale – NERAM, Armidale – February 3 – March 12, 2023
Simone recently spent a richly rewarding week in Provence at a workshop run by the British painter Julian Merrow-Smith to push her work to a higher level, work plein air in a group and learn how to loosen up her brushstrokes – and give her the confidence to begin to seek representation by a gallery.
