When Kirsten Sivyer was a child she’d copy pictures of animals with elaborate accuracy and add little descriptions about the animal’s features, habitat and lifecycle. At one stage she thought she’d go on to be a vet but it turned out that all that drawing practice was the seed for the other career she eventually followed.

“I wanted to study art when I left school but my parents were concerned that there would be no real financial future in being an artist. Obviously I beg to differ as it’s been my career for well over a decade now,” Kirsten says. 

Kirsten did eventually go on to study fine art and while sharing a studio with other artists in Perth she gained practical insight into various techniques that she says her Uni degree did not teach her.

As Kirsten continued to explore and master her craft she found herself living in WA’s Goldfields region where she’d grab her camera, jump in the car and head into the wide open landscape to capture images that she’d later use as a reference for her paintings. 

“I also started working as a photographer for the local paper and while I wasn’t selling much art I did win a few awards which helped things along. I then went to live in the Wheatbelt region where I continued to paint but I was doing a bit of art teaching at one of the high schools and teaching private students as well.”

And it was while in the Wheatbelt that Kirsten became inspired by smokey atmospheres; something that has since become a distinguishing feature in many of her paintings. She was so enraptured by the effects of smoke on a landscape that she admits she became “a bit of a fire chaser”.

“In essence I was chasing the smoke as I like the atmosphere smoke creates as you get a lot of weird optical things happening. You get this really cool prismatic lighting effect. I love how the light decays and changes as it moves through the smoke and it becomes almost abstract. I suppose the key thing is it’s actually not about the subject matter, it’s about the light. If there’s some sort of interesting light effect going on…  I’m interested.”

Kirsten’s technique also involves creating “hard and soft edges” and the effect creates a balanced hazy effect that is almost otherworldly. She adds that, like any kind of art be it music or visual art, she’s trying to share an experience or feeling with others.

Kirsten’s preferred painting medium is oil on canvas and she says she likes the texture of oil, the way it moves and the way it enables her to play with opacity.

“Oils are just so beautiful as they allow you to build up texture and you can create beautiful light effects that really glow and you get a kind of lusciousness in the finished painting.”

As most regional artists will know, it’s wise to expand your market reach so Kirsten also works on regular painting commissions for private clients located further afield. It may be a painting inspired by another artist that the client wants, a commission inspired by one of Kirsten’s previous works or something highly specific. Kirsten can do more than half a dozen commissions a year and with each one taking weeks or even months to complete it means there’s always a commissioned painting underway. And having extensive experience as an art teacher Kirsten also does one-on-one painting sessions with private students.

But whether she’s teaching, painting her own works or painting a commissioned piece Kirsten says it’s still about creating pictures and more importantly it’s still all about capturing light.

To view Kirsten’s work, or get in touch, visit kirstensivyer.com