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 own designs, selling cards, wrapping paper and other stationery items from a collective store in Armidale and via an online shop. A self taught painter, Simone also loves to inspire creativity in others and 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 to learn how to loosen up her brushstrokes – and to give her the confidence to begin to seek representation by a gallery.
Established in 2021, the National Emerging Art Prize was created to provide an annual, highly visible national platform to identify, promote and support the most promising emerging visual and ceramic artists in Australia.