Gaye Chapman is an artist of national standing. She has exhibited widely throughout Australia and overseas, and has many major collections, awards, prizes and exhibitions to her name including the Sulman, Blake, Fleurieu, Kedumba and Waterhouse Natural History art prizes.
Her bush childhood on the castlereagh River at Mendooran, NSW remains the inspiration for both Gaye's paintings and children's illustration.
She won her first art prize at eight, studied art by correspondence in her own painting studio at eleven and went on to lifelong art school studies in fine art and design at Wollongong TAFE; the Australian Film, TV and Radio School; the University of New England; the Julian Ashton Art School; and the University of Western Sydney.
Gaye has recently completed a PhD in Contemporary Art about 'rotten Castlereagh River weeds!' She began illustrating for children in 1989, in the NSW School Magazine.
Gaye says, ’As a girl I dreamed of a life full of travel, art and adventure. I have sailed in an Indonesian fishing boat around the Arafura Sea, jumped out of airplanes, designed posters for the National Theatre in London, hitch-hiked through Sumatra, motor-biked across Java, lived with a hill-tribe in Morocco and been artist-in-residence in a rainforest.
I use any materials at all to make a picture, including real objects like mud, feathers and grass. I then cut out my finsihed paitnings andpaste them down again in new ways. I am very proud to have illustrated Heart of the Tiger, it is about the things I care for most: old age, childhood and hope for the future of our green planet.'
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