Professionally trained Artist and Art Teacher Cheryl Willcox was born and raised in NSW Australia. She is a wife and mother of two who loves to explore, sketch and paint her beautiful beachfront home and new places around the world.
Always creating and painting, she studied Art at Newcastle College of Advanced Education, graduating with a Bachelor of Education in Art. In 1982 Cheryl began her career as a high school Visual Art Teacher.
A stint in China in 2000 gave Cheryl the space and time to reflect and become familiar with Art from another culture and how it is interwoven through all aspects of life and society.
On returning to Australia, with a reawakened love of its natural beauty; rugged, picturesque, clean and eternal landscape, Cheryl decided, “This has to be painted! And cannot be taken for granted again!”
It would be another 10 years, after the children were launched into their post school possibilities, when time and space would be available for Cheryl to create Art.
Cheryl decided to seriously level-up her Art skills by enrolling in Watts Atelier Art School in the State of California, USA. The techniques she learned there leveraged both the old and modern “Masters”.
A space for her professional studio and workshops space was created recently when she and her husband renovated the bottom floor of their home. This was the beginning of her career as an exhibiting Artist and Art Mentor.
Cheryl’s new book for Art Lovers and Learners will be released in September, 2023!
EARLY LIFE
I didn’t know it at the time, but hanging on the walls of my Infants School were famous Artworks by Degas (Tumbling Ballerinas), Franz Marc (Red Horses) and Paul Klee (Slaying the Seals).
I remember being totally captivated by the images, the colour and the feelings I got from looking at what I would later discover were just prints. But it didn’t matter – my love of Art was born.
That initial feeling has never left me and it’s why Art continues to be my reason for being – through teaching, painting and experiencing it first-hand.
After years teaching high school Visual Arts, I left to concentrate on my own Art-making, studying classical drawing and oil painting at Watts Atelier and then being coached by Stefan Baumann of The Grand View TV Show.
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