Kendal Heyes came to Sydney from New Zealand in 1979 and studied at Sydney College of the Arts in the early 80s.

Since then he has held over 50 solo exhibitions of photography, painting, drawing and printmaking. His work is in many public collections including the Art Gallery of NSW and National Gallery of Australia and, in New Zealand, Victoria University of Wellington, University of Otago and the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Kendal moved to the Illawarra in 2010 and now resides in Coledale.

“Growing up in New Zealand, my family often lived on the coast or near a beach and I think things like that stay with you, so for me moving to the Illawarra is like coming home,” he said.

For the last four years Kendal has been working on a series of three related drawing exhibitions called Time and the Ocean, which he showed at ArticulateUpstairs in Leichhardt between 2019 and 2022. From this body of work, two drawings became finalists in the Dobell Drawing Prize and another large work was in the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award. Yet another was a finalist in the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, which he won with a similar drawing in 2017.

Having focussed on drawing for several years, Kendal has recently returned to printmaking.

“I bought a printmaking press but didn’t have a place to set it up.

“Now I have clear time and a new studio with enough space to make prints.

“I’ve been making linocuts, a medium I especially like for its directness and simplicity, and through printmaking I’ve also returned to drawing with a brush and ink.”

One of Kendal’s recent linocuts was a finalist in the 2023 Fremantle Arts Centre Print Award.

Kendal (follow @kendalheyes on Instagram) will show his prints in his studio at the Timbermill Studios in Bulli as part of the Northern Illawarra Art Trail Open Studio weekend on Nov 18-19, www.niarttrail.com