Smith & Brooks is a collaborative artist duo made up of Kerrin Smith and Jacky Brooks - longtime friends who share a background in visual arts, photography, and printmaking. Their creative partnership began during the pandemic as a way to reconnect with both art and the natural world.

With a focus on interpreting native Australian plant species, Smith & Brooks use repetition, pattern, and layering, often inspired by the understories of landscapes. Using a mix of acrylics, charcoal, pastel, and advanced printing techniques, they balance expressive mark-making with precise reproduction.

We caught up with Kerrin and Jacky to discover more about their practice, inspiration, and life as a duo.

Explore Smith & Brooks artworks here.

Tell us a little about ‘Smith & Brooks’ - Introduce yourselves and tell us about how Smith & Brooks came to be?

Kerrin: Jacky and I have been friends for probably 15 years now. We initially worked together in a professional printing lab and have stayed friends ever since. We have both worked in similar industries like printing, photography and videography. We had also both studied art after high school - I did a Bachelor of Visual Arts and then a Diploma of Film and Television, and Jacky had completed a Bachelor of Digital Arts.

During the pandemic, I think we were just trying to stay sane like so many other people by reconnecting to the parts of our lives that had been neglected, like making art and being in nature and the environment. During a catch-up for a friend's birthday, we just got talking about all the ideas we both had had about art and creating and printing, and that was it - we started collaborating.

Where did you first discover your love for creating?

Kerrin: I don’t think I really ‘discovered’ being creative - I just always was. Even before I started primary school, I was drawing large storyboard-like illustrations of TV shows I had watched and creating artworks that seemed to be really quite good for my age. Art has been a lifelong outlet for my creativity and ideas.

Jacky: My mum was a crafter and always got me and my siblings involved in things like paper toll and folk art. Creativity was just integrated into our everyday living. We would do things like have cartooning classes and make things we needed from scratch. That was just normal for us.

Kerrin: I think when you have art and creating as part of your life from an early age, it really does build a creative pathway that you feel compelled to follow throughout your life.

We love that you both creatively collaborate on your art - can you tell us a little about your individual roles and art process?

Kerrin: I think a lot of collaboration is really conversation. We talk a lot about native species we have seen - plants that might translate well artistically - and we share lots of photos too. Jacky and I are always taking photos while we are out and about or travelling, and then seeing what we think might work. I work predominantly on the painting and drawing of the works, too.

Jacky: I love investigating landscapes, getting up close and finding the hidden gems. Capturing the plants with my phone or camera that I think have distinctive shapes and lines. I work a lot on our colour palettes - being really selective about colour choices is important to the later process of scanning and printing the works. I scan all of our original artworks using the latest in art reproduction technology, and I am also responsible for the printing of our limited-edition prints onto canvas and fine art paper. If one of the elements in that process isn’t up to scratch, then it will show in our final print products - everything has to be perfect.

What does a day in the life at Smith & Brooks look like?

Jacky: We have a little ritual we do, ‘Smith & Brooks Fridays’. We are always communicating and sharing photos and videos of where we are at with our work, but Fridays are when we get together. Our ‘Smith & Brooks Fridays’ involve coffee, home baked treats (we both love cooking), scanning, discussing plants, sharing photos and painting ideas, colour palettes, life, kids, and we always finish with framing the works and photographing them on one of our bushland properties. 

We love the colours in your works and the Australian Native series. Who, where and/or what do you turn to for inspiration?

Kerrin: We have been working a lot with colours found in the understories of landscapes - the shadowy corners that you don’t often get drawn to when looking at the environment. We have also been thinking about the dappled light that makes it through the canopy, too, and creating works with more contrasting palettes of light and shade.

Jacky: I think East Coast landscapes and coastlines have to be one of our favourite sources of inspiration. At the moment, we are working with a lot of native coastal ferns and palms for the first time.

If you had to describe the Smith & Brooks art style in 3 words, what would they be?

Expressive connection (to the) landscape

Your works use repetition, pattern and layering - can you tell us a bit about the materials and tools you use to make your creations?

Kerrin: Right now, we have been using charcoal, which has to be one of my all-time favourite mediums. We have been working on how we can incorporate pastel and charcoal into our work for a while now by making sure we get the spraying/fixing process working perfectly so that the artworks can be scanned and handled without smudging.

We do mostly work in acrylic paints, though - they are fast drying, which is perfect for our fast-paced approach to creating. But the added elements of mixed media really build that textural and dimensional qualities of the works.

If you had to pick a favourite piece right now, which would it be and why? 

Jacky: I’d have to go with ‘Banksia Serrata Still IV’. I photographed that particular banksia serrata foliage just near Port Stephens where I grew up. I was lucky to spend my childhood surrounded by some of the most incredible beaches and vast stretches of marshlands and bushland. 

I love that  ‘Banksia Serrata Still IV’ is visually balanced within its spatial confines. I love the rough, serrated textures too. The scale of the work really pays tribute to the grandness of such a unique species found in our country.

What are you currently watching, reading and/or listening to?

Kerrin: My favourite podcast is The Great Women Artists with art historian and curator Katy Hessel - her work in celebrating women artists is so dedicated and amazing. I also just finished ‘Life with Picasso’ by Francoise Gilot - such an excellent first-hand insight into his life and work.

Jacky: I’ve been listening to Ludovico Euinadi - his music pieces are an incredible accompaniment when working in nature - when I’m in my permaculture food forest or checking on my beehives. I am also reading ‘The Psychology of Gardening’ by Harriet Gross.

Explore Smith & Brooks artworks here.