Miranda Free doesn’t do things by halves. When COVID-19 scuttled her plans for plein air painting tours in regional Western Australia, she pivoted. Within months, she’d created an art trail from scratch in Nannup, then expanded it across the Blackwood River Valley.
Six years on, the Blackwood River Arts Trail (BRAT) brings thousands of visitors to towns that people might normally miss on their way to the bigger tourist spots.
Miranda Free in her home studio, The Eyrie Studio Gallery in Nannup – open by appointment outside the BRAT dates. Mater Memento Mori (mentioned in the text) is top left – showing in Women & Art exhibition.
Miranda’s trajectory has always been unconventional. Growing up on Sydney’s North Shore with a passion for the arts, she surprised everyone (including herself) by veering into molecular biology. Science communication followed, then teaching, and it was after the birth of her third child (a son she named Vincent) that things crystallised for her. “I thought, oh, I don’t really want to be a scientist. I want to be an artist”.
She returned to art school and retrained. Then came a two-year stint in Kuala Lumpur, where she set up a studio in her condo and embedded herself in the expat arts scene. Her work was beginning to attract international attention: an artist residency in Thailand, then an invitation to an arts festival in Denmark. She was on the cusp of something larger, and then the pandemic arrived.
Miranda and her husband Steve moved to the bush and wide open spaces of Nannup to focus on art and embrace the small community. Now, with lockdowns and social distancing in the past, Miranda is well and truly settled in the South West. Still, she says living regionally presents challenges that even neighbouring coastal country artists don’t face. “When I’m telling people where Nannup is, I say, oh, it’s near Margaret River,” Miranda says, “but it’s quite far away. The visibility isn’t here. The foot traffic isn’t here. So I have attempted to create both.”
Mackintosh Roses, copper foiled stained glass 20 x 15 cm each – showing in Women & Art exhibition.
Miranda launched the first Nannup Arts Trail in 2020, which featured eight venues and around 20 artists. It was, as she puts it, “an unqualified success”, but she was already thinking bigger. She kept working to grow the festival across the Blackwood River shires, reaching out to Bridgetown and Balingup, sourcing more than 30 artists and 20 venues, and cobbling together around $7,000 in funding. Over the initial years her role covered everything from contact person, administrator, grant writer, sponsorship coordinator, and designer.
Fast forward to this year and the trail now spans four shires; Nannup, Bridgetown-Greenbushes, Donnybrook-Balingup, and Boyup Brook, with around 100 artists across 37 venues. The Blackwood River Film Festival, a satellite event established by Miranda and her husband, runs concurrently, with screenings in multiple town halls across the Blackwood River Valley.
Aside from her passion for giving back to the community and creating avenues for artist exposure and visibility, Miranda spends her time as a practising artist herself. Her upcoming joint exhibition with textile artist Cassi-Jo Davis at the Margaret River HEART opens on March 19. Titled; Women & Art: Myths, Legends & Goddesses, the exhibition explores women in mythology, women in art history, and women who’ve been written out of both.
The exhibition carries a weight that is personal for Miranda too, as she lived her life in the company of men, with three sons, four brothers, and four grandsons, and lost her mother when she was just 22. The absence shaped her in ways that she articulates through her art: “Things that belong to my mother feature in many of my works,” she says, “One in particular ‘Mater Memento Mori’ is a homage to her and will be included in the Women & Art exhibition.”
Allegory of Melancholia, oil on canvas, 76 x 61 cm – showing in Women & Art exhibition.
Miranda’s previous accolades include being a finalist in the Lethbridge Small Scale Art Award and the John Lesley Landscape Prize, and next year she is entering the Archibald. But aside from her productivity, what’s really striking about Miranda is her clarity about what matters. She created the Blackwood River Arts Trail to build connections within the community, and to expose the works of regional artists who don’t quite fit into Margaret River Open Studios or the Southern Arts Trail. Artists working in relative isolation, an hour or more from the coast, whose work deserves to be seen. And it’s working. Artists who wouldn’t otherwise meet now gather regularly, and they sell their works to repeat tourists who come year on year.
Some artists are professionals; some are hobbyists. Miranda doesn’t hierarchise. “I have always tried to balance promoting the ‘big’ names with those who are less well known,” she says. “So that we can both gain traction as an event and assist those who could do with more exposure”. It’s a generous impulse, and a pragmatic one.
A Corner for Reading, oil on timber, 30 x 30 cm (Queenslander Interiors Series).
Although the original founder of BRAT, Miranda’s never been precious about ownership. She understands that sustainable change requires handing over the reins. “I believe that it is important to hand on the baton to others to bring fresh ideas and energy,” she says, and she means it. After stepping back for two years, she’s returned to the committee this year, but only in a supporting role. Her focus has shifted to the Blackwood River Film Festival, which, together with her husband is a project that they have developed alongside BRAT.
The rest of her hours go to her own practice. She’s entering major prizes. She’s preparing for the Margaret River show at the HEART. And she’s finally doing what she set out to do when she named her third child Vincent and decided to become the artist she’d always meant to be.
We honour and respect the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we gather and operate, acknowledging their enduring connection to Country, culture, and spirituality.
We recognise the resilience and strength of First Nations peoples, their rich cultural heritage, and the ongoing importance of their knowledge and practices. We are committed to fostering cultural equity and understanding with First Nations people across WA.
Sophie Mathewson
Published on 
