I love my budgies.

I've owned, bred, & occasionally shown them for more than 40 years, usually keeping between 100 - 200 at a time in our aviaries.

I find them exquisitely beautiful, & they also make wonderful pets. They're playful, social, chatty & often far more intelligent than we give them credit for, & the array of colours & mutations now available is huge, each little bird is an incredible artwork all of its own.

Golden face violets are my weakness,  I've worked on perfecting the colour for years, which includes mauves. It brings me happiness that my birds are now found in aviaries around Australia, as they have been shipped to several states, & shared with breeders & show people alike over 3 decades.

Over the years, I was more interested in the colour than the large show size, so I left the breeding of the big show budgies, to others that had more time & inclination to attend shows. I've really just enjoyed the birds, who've brought me immense joy.

One of the biggest highlights with the budgies was when a few years ago, world renowned bird photographer Leila Jeffreys contacted me to see if she could photograph some of the birds for one of her upcoming exhibitions.  Not only is Leila a very talented  photographer, she also happens to be a beautiful person. Leila came to stay at the farm for a few days whilst she photographed the budgies, which ended up being shown in her worldwide exhibition called "High Society", & also featured in her book Des oiseaux. 

The exhibition is still currently travelling around the world and features several of my birds along side others. An incredible exhibition, & credit to Leila's superb photography skills.

The next highlight was when Leila let me know that 3 of the pictures she had taken of my birds had been selected, & were going to be released as Australian postage stamps. This was even more of a thrill!

The stamps came out in July 2022 through Australia Post as limited & collector editions.

Bluey & Licorice

The Tweets &

Celery.

Such a thrill to have some of my birds immortalised. 

In other budgie news...

More recently, I was asked to design & paint the logo for the new Canberra Budgerigar Club, which was an honor. We came up with a blue & green show budgie sitting amongst Australian bottle brush. The design looks great on all their new merchandise.

Currently I am working on a new body of work, large 1 metre x 1 metre paintings of budgerigars, in a combination of my different art styles. The image on this page is of a golden faced violet budgie from this series, with 3D textures & various mediums used in its creation. The title of this piece is "Down the rabbit hole".

I have exhibited the first 5 paintings, along with some other works in 2023 at Rusten House Art Gallery in Queanbeyan, in my "Alison's Wonderful Land" exhibition, & hope to have the remaining 7 paintings finished in the next 18 months to 2 years, so I can exhibit the full series together.  The idea of this series has been in my head for more than a decade, so it's great to have finally started on them. These paintings are currently not for sale, but I will look at getting limited edition prints done, once the series is complete.

In finishing, I also decided to create a range of budgerigar products with some of my art, so that budgie lovers far & wide could enjoy some budgie love!

I hope that people enjoy my new budgie range, I have been getting wonderful feedback  from the tea towels, coasters & keyrings, & look forward to sharing more budgie designs in the future.