Local painters and curious newcomers alike will get a rare look inside the working process of one of Sydney’s most respected landscape artists next week, when Mellissa Read-Devine visits Castle Hill Art Society to demonstrate how she builds colour into a scene.
The session, titled “How to See and Paint Colour in the Landscape,” runs on Tuesday, 2nd September, 2026, starting at 7.00 pm at the Castle Glen Community Centre on Ridgecrop Drive.
Read-Devine has spent close to thirty years at the easel, and it shows in how she talks about paint as much as in how she applies it. She’s known around the Sydney art scene for a loose, confident hand and a palette that leans bold rather than safe — the kind of colour choices that make a hillside or a stretch of bushland feel alive rather than simply recorded. She holds Fellowship status with the Royal Art Society, a mark reserved for artists whose work and standing in the field run deep.
What makes these demonstrations worth turning up for isn’t just watching a skilled painter work, though that’s reason enough.
It’s the chance to ask the kind of questions that don’t get answered in a how-to book — why she reaches for one colour over another, when she decides a painting is finished, how she reads light on a landscape before she’s even picked up a brush.
Members of Castle Hill Art Society will have first pick of the good seats, but the club is opening its doors to visitors too, so anyone interested in painting is welcome to come along.
Anyone wanting more details, or hoping to find out about joining the society more broadly, can call 9899 3179 or head to www.castlehillartsociety.org.au.