about the artist

Willy was born in 1954 in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia. She has lived most of her life there, except for a few years as a young girl and again for a short time as a teenager when she moved to her parents' home town of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Willy is the mother of five children and is a professional artist, producing contemporary works which have been widely acclaimed. Colour features strongly in her work and influences have filtered through from favourite "masters" Chagall and Blackman.

She uses mainly acrylic paint to produce works with an Australian flavour — unique, imaginative paintings which feature many of Australia's outback icons: emus, kangaroos, koalas, platypuses and of course the people.

Her work can be best described as paintings "from the heart". She resumed painting and exhibiting in the late 1980s and her first solo exhibition was in 1995 at Libby Edwards Galleries in Melbourne. She has since held solo exhibitions in Melbourne in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005, in Sydney in 2004 and 2006 and Brisbane in 2005 and 2006. She has also taken part in many group exhibitions. Her unique works featuring Australian themes have proven popular, with paintings going to private collections in Australia, as well as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong.