Miranda Free

Miranda Free is an Australian artist based in a small town, Nannup, in the southwest corner of the country. After working as a scientist, teacher and communications professional for many years, Miranda trained through an atelier style school in Brisbane Australia.

She has been painting for over 20 years and practicing full time for the last ten years whilst living in Western Australia and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. She primarily paints in oils in a contemporary realist style, though she uses a range of other media in her practice. Miranda also works across various genre: landscape (especially plein air), still life, figurative and portraiture. During 2015-2016 she circumnavigated Australia 100km at time and created landscape artworks en plein air of each location in various media. Since then she has produced larger works that are based on her these studies and that also respond to her memories, notes and photographs from the journey. Her figurative works are generally of women in which she explores ways of incorporating narratives about the lived experience of the subject within the works by "collaging'' together various aspects of import to the subject. Living amongst the forests of the Southwest she is inspired by the abundance of native flora in the region and examples are frequently found in her still life works. She prefers to work from life and likes to create still life vignettes that are dramatically lit to create elements of mystery or drama and that include items of personal significance.

Miranda has had six solo exhibitions and participated in around 30 group exhibitions. In addition to the upcoming exhibition in her studio gallery during BRAT23, Miranda will also be participation in one joint and two solo exhibitions later in 2023 (Collie Art Gallery, Lost & Found Gallery Fremantle & Bond Store Art Geo Gallery Busselton). She has undertaken five Artist Residencies in Australia and Internationally. She was Invited to participate in inaugural Für International Art Festival in Denmark in June 2020 , this was sadly cancelled. She has been accepted for Nancy Fairfax Residency Program at Tweed Regional Gallery Murwillumbah in Nov 2021 which has been postponed until May 2023.

Prior to moving to WA Miranda worked extensively in visual art education at all levels including teaching life drawing at the Griffith University School of Art. She has conducted and published research into the value of arts in education and written art programs both as a teacher and for a series of apps ‘Botanics” that were designed to enable teachers untrained in art practice and education to deliver effective programs. Due to the fast pace of change in app development and other factors they are no longer available. She has also delivered numerous art workshops for adults, children and in professional development contexts for teachers.

Miranda is the founder of the Blackwood River Arts Trail which she coordinated in 2021 & 2022 but has stepped back this year to focus on her practice and the Blackwood River Film Festival.