The Love Blooms exhibition is currently showing at Fern Street Gallery with the proprietor Kerry Bruce showing off her original work. The art focuses on the joy of blooming flowers but Fern Street Gallery has a regular list of visiting and resident artists, and the art on display often changes every two weeks.

The Bugle many of her sales come from regulars through mailing lists. She added that the wide shopfront window at her current location attracted her and the feeling of positive energy with her gallery being successful from the start.

Many of Kerry’s paintings are easily recognisable local spots, such as the lookout over Northern Werri Beach and Werri Lagoon. Kerry’s paintings have a strong impressionist brushstroke and are uplifting and full of bright colour and uplifting emotions

Art is her ‘Happy Place’ Kerry says.

Her signature style is based on bold pigments, sensuous application of the paint, and all convey a sense of joy. This is why Kerry so often likes to paint a bouquet of blooms in various forms, shapes and colours.

Each time she paints, she says, a new interpretation emerges and evolves spontaneously through variation of the subject through often small choices and changes in technique, compositions and colours. 

The work starts in composition before the first brushstroke, designing and styling the floral arrangements and even searching for blooms with distinctive shapes that suggest specific movement and energy on the canvas.

Kerry is originally from Newcastle but lived in Gerringong for many years, and recently returned from traveling through Canada.