Rowan Fotheringham is an artist who lives and works on Woodhill Mountain in the Shoalhaven, on 12 acres of eucalypt forest between Kangaroo Valley and Berry. Born in Sydney in 1951, he works in drawing, painting, collage and sculpture, with charcoal, ink, watercolour, oil and acrylic among his main materials.

He began as a freelance photographer, and his work appeared in publications including Australian Country Style, Vogue Entertaining and Gourmet Traveller. While living in Balmain he took up drawing and painting, finding his subject in the working waterfront and, later, in Sydney Harbour and Pittwater under sail. This became the Waterborne series, shown in 2002, 2007, 2008 and again in the 2026 retrospective, Waterborne 3, at Studio W in Woolloomooloo.

In 2014 Rowan graduated from the National Art School with a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting. He was awarded the Jocelyn Maugham Drawing Prize in 2012, and has been a finalist in major art prizes including the Wynne Prize and the Kedumba Drawing Prize.

Today his work centres on the bush around his home: bark, branches, and the spaces and light between them. He works outdoors, gathering observations that develop into studio paintings. His floating sculpture Chrysalis was shown at Sculptures in the Valley in 2025, and he opens his studio as part of the Kangaroo Valley Art Trail.

Follow Rowan on Instagram at @Rowan.Fotheringham