Artist Spotlight: Trudy Rice, Printmaker of the Australian Garden

Some wallpaper starts on a screen. Trudy Rice's starts in the garden.

Trudy is an Australian printmaker based in Barongarook, Victoria, whose nature-inspired works on paper are built from layers of solar-plate etching, monotype, drawing and pochoir. Decades of observing birds, bees, dragonflies and native gardens sit behind every piece. Her work has been exhibited across Australia and internationally, and is represented by Queenscliff Gallery.

Her wallpaper collection, available through her artist page, brings that slow, layered printmaking process to the wall.

A Slow, Painterly Process

Printmaking is often thought of as a way to make multiples. Trudy treats it as the opposite: a slow, painterly process in which every piece is unique.

Solar-plate etching lets her transfer finely observed drawings, a fern frond, a banksia cone, the wing of a wattlebird, into an inked plate with extraordinary delicacy. Monotype and pochoir then add washes and stencilled layers of colour, so each finished work carries both precision and chance.

"Every artwork begins with a quiet moment in nature." That is Trudy's own description of where her pieces come from: landscape, memory and chance settling into balance. She works in the spirit of Kintsugi, the Japanese practice of honouring cracks rather than disguising them, letting the break become part of the story.

The Designs

Three pattern families make up the collection, each drawn directly from the Australian garden.

Garden Fern layers delicately etched fern fronds into a soft botanical repeat. It is available in five colourways, from the crisp white of Snow through Rose and Latte to Pistachio and the deep, dramatic Midnight. It suits bedrooms and quiet living spaces, and sits comfortably within our wider botanical collection.

Vintage Banksias has the feel of a heritage botanical print, with nine colourways ranging from Cream and Sepia to Teal, Jade and Forest. It is the most traditional of the three and works beautifully in dining rooms, hallways and studies.

Silver Princess & Wattlebird pairs the weeping blossoms of the silver princess gum with one of the bush's most characterful birds. Eight colourways take it from soft White and Pink through to Garnet and Cornflower.

The collection also includes three mural works: Golden Hour, The Gentle Pause and Time Softens, each a single composed scene rather than a repeat.

Where It Works

Trudy's designs are at home anywhere you want calm and a connection to the natural world: bedrooms, reading corners, entryways and living rooms. The finer etched detail rewards rooms where you stand close to the wall, while the murals hold larger spaces.

Because every design is printed to order on our removable peel and stick material, you can order a $10 sample and see the colour and texture in your own light before committing. Run your wall dimensions through the calculator for an instant price.

Original Art, Properly Supported

Every Trudy Rice design is used under licence and printed on demand at $99/m², with a share of each purchase going directly to Trudy. When you hang one of these designs, you are buying original Australian art and supporting the artist behind it.

Explore the full collection on Trudy's artist page, or browse more native designs in our Australiana collection.