Brush and Wheel opens on Friday from 6pm, and will bring together paintings from Inverell’s Melissa Simmonds and the Border’s Jennifer Ryan with Glen Innes ceramicist Nicci Parry-Jones.

Gallery co-ordinator Jo Williams said it was exciting to see the three regional artists in exhibition together.

“There is so much exciting work going on in the area, and I don’t think people really realise how many talented people we have,” she said.

Mel, who won the acquisition in last year’s Inverell Art Prize, recalled the trio planning the exhibition and said they wanted to keep the brief open. Their works share a similar boldness of colour, which Jo anticipated would come together well in the joint exhibition.

“We didn’t want to lock us into a particular theme when there was the three of us,” Mel said.

Jennifer exhibited in Parliament House in Sydney alongside a handful of selected regional artists, and presented a collection still-life canvases, most featuring a bird or other animal.

“I am a vet and I’m a country girl, so I am really interested in the relationship of animals to the human environment,” she said.

Jennifer said she is used to turning the brushes to birds and animals, but this exhibition will be one of her early works of potted flowers.

“I have done lots of birds not in cages, sitting on tops of cages, escaping from cages, on the loose. I used to have pet budgies and things and I sort of came to realise that you are using those things to sort of beautify your own environment,” she said.

“Now, I have peacocks walking around and it sort of delights me. They are like living sculptures in the garden. They are just beautiful.”

Mel will exhibit boldly-colourful agrarian scenes among others, and said she is looking to add a point of difference to the usual.

“To take something that is quite standard - something that is usual, and make it unusual,” she said.