En plein air oil painting landscape with Miranda Free

Colour in Your Life featured artist Miranda Free appeared on Colour In Your Life Season Twenty One (21).

Read a little bit about the artist here, and support our site by joining and watching the episode below.

As a child Miranda Free was constantly drawing and painting. Her fascination with art continued throughout my school years and it was her intention to attend an art school – that is until her final year of high school when she became hijacked by an interest in Biology. At university she studied Molecular Biology, Education and Communication and spent many years working in those fields with a focus on graphic design and desktop publishing. 

When Miranda’s third and last child arrived, she realised that pursuing her earlier interests in drawing and painting was vital to her well-being, and hence she discovered the Arts Academy, a small Brisbane based atelier style school, to train and hone her skills. Now that her children have grown she practices full time in a contemporary realist style across various genres: landscape, figurative, portrait and still life.

Miranda is influenced by a range of artists including masters of the Renaissance, Dutch still life artists and the incomparable Vermeer, the impressionist and post-impressionist eras, particularly Cezanne, Monet, Renoir, Degas and of course Van Gogh. Early Australian landscape painters such as Eugene von Guérard, and the later Heidelberg school painters are a strong influence on my landscapes. Figurative painters such as John Singer Sargent and Australian Rupert Bunny delight her and she is heartened by the current move in artists worldwide to engage in traditional training in fine art and the abundance of ateliers around the world that show their art via social media. Contemporary artists that have strongly influenced Miranda, are Australian Kaye Kane, British expat in Provence Julian Merrow-Smith and American Sadie Jernigan Valeri to name a select few. 

During 2015-2016 Miranda and her husband Steve circumnavigated Australia, 100km at time, and created plein air landscape artworks of each location. On returning from this trip Miranda developed and continue to work on a body of work based on these travels. From 2017 to April 2019 she lived part time in Malaysia, travelling South-East Asia extensively, and collecting items to populate her still life works whilst returning regularly to my Australian studio.

Now living in the small and beautiful WA town of Nannup, situated close to the Margaret River wine and food region, Miranda is focussed on developing her practice of creating small works, en plein air landscapes and still life as well as continuing to paint larger landscapes and figurative works. Living in a region with amazingly diverse flora and fauna, she is constantly inspired to include many in her work also.

If you would like to join Miranda Free and husband Steve for an amazing, immersive painting experience in 2021, she is running painting tours and workshops that will showcase many of the beautiful landscapes that abound in the region of South-West WA, Blackwood Valley.

All Miranda’s work is available for purchase via her online shop, or you can contact her to arrange a commission. Some works are also available as prints.

You can contact Miranda Free about her art tips or art techniques directly via her website at www.mirandafree.com

Watch Miranda’s Episode Here:

Head over to our gallery and check out other amazing artists or jump on our forums and let us know what you think!