Shona Nunan and Michael-Francis Cartwright are a dynamic Australian partnership who have been creating their art, sculpture, painting and drawing for over 40 years. They inherited their love and passion for art from their fathers who were both painters and now, their two sons, Jacob and Sollai, are also sculptors, making a third generational artist family.
With studios in Italy, France and Australia, Cartwright and Nunan are inspired by a transcultural journey, linking their early ancestral journey from Europe to Australia and back to Europe in their own lifetime.
While moving to France, Italy has remained a stronghold for their art where they work at different periods of the year in the studios for marble and bronze in the great artist cities of Pietrasanta and Carrara, the mecca of the art world for sculpture materials, tools and artisans. First arriving in 1984 they set up studios in Carrara, setting them on track to achieve the dreams that consequently followed.
In their early nomadic wanderings through Asia, Papua New Guinea, Australia and Europe they found inspiration and perception from great living cultures; the beauty, the edge of life in nature, the marks of ancient peoples in the land before them, all creating and adding to the language of their art.
Their studios are now in Correns, Provence, in the heart of a small biological village on the Argens River. They have five floors of an old house they have converted to create and store their artworks and now they have added ‘le Grand Atelier’ where they house their large sculptures and paintings.
They welcome collectors and art lovers to the studio by appointment. Contact