Maegen Oberhardt

​Maegen grew up on a farm in rural Queensland. The isolation of where she lived meant that many of her earliest interactions were with the native wildlife. This allowed her to study their features, characteristics, expressions and movements. With a passion for drawing, these early interactions became the subject of her works over the years.

While studying a Bachelor in Design Arts, she discovered the technique known as "painting with fire' which requires layering carbon soot onto a sketch and then removing layers using etching with various tools (including brushes, hand tools, and erasers.) The delicate and lengthy process requires a lot of patience, but eventually the portrait emerges from the carbon footprint left behind from the flame. The resulting artwork is extremely fragile. If you touch the original media (carbon soot) it will lift off the paper. As a result, the originals are always mounted under glass with matting as a safety margin.

Maegan also has a passion for wildlife conservation and uses her work as a way to raise awareness. You can see more of her work on her website: https://www.maeganoberhardt.com