Rochelle Summerfield was born in Sydney, Australia and lives and works in Northern New South Wales. Her studio looks onto the majestic Clarence River, its lush beauty and tempestuous nature bears a powerful presence on her work. Summerfield combines the classic media of drawing and collage with new technologies of photomedia and recently animation to examine psychological and cultural relationships to nature, which she says are full of contradiction and emotion. Summerfield begins with collage- historically a subversive and disruptive medium- to make powerful female forms. Semi-formed and cavorting women defy body image and inject a rebellious humour into her work. The flat 2 dimensional nature of collage, interrupts our perception of the picture plan and the sense of the ‘real’ as photographic lush riverscapes or highly detailed pencil drawings. Rochelle Summerfield began her formal training at the highly traditional Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney and later completed a contemporary Bachelor of Visual Arts with first class honours in printmaking followed by a Masters of Arts by research. Exploring themes of interconnectivity and ‘embodied’ subjectivity, her training launched her combination of collage, printmaking and new digital mediums. Rochelle Summerfield’s highlights for 2017 include being overall winner of the Moreton Bay Region Art Awards for photo-digital. She has been selected for many solo shows and exhibited nationally in selected group exhibitions. Summerfield has been selected for international and national artist residencies and been awarded several grants. Most recently being for a collaborative project involving animation. She has exhibited widely throughout Australia and has artwork in public and private collections across Australia such as National Library Permanent Collection, State Library of Victoria Collection, RMIT Gallery Melbourne, Charles Sturt University Art Collection and several regional galleries such as the Tweed Regional Gallery & Margaret Olley Bequest. In 2016 and 2009 she was a commissioned artist for The Print Council of Australia.