Donna Townend Artist Studio

My work spans portraiture and commissioned artworks, textile design, and jewellery, connected by an intuitive approach to making and a sensitivity to material. Rather than working within a single discipline, I move between mediums, allowing each process to inform the others.

I create portraiture and commissioned artworks that focus on presence, atmosphere, and subtle narrative. Working primarily through painting and drawing, each piece is developed in response to the individual, the environment, and the surface it is created on.

Commissions are approached as collaborative processes, with time given to understanding the subject and allowing the work to evolve naturally rather than following a predetermined formula.

Textile designs are developed through a combination of hand-drawn, hand-painted, and digital techniques. Some begin as original paintings or sketches, others through digital exploration or AI-assisted base imagery, all refined through careful human decision-making.

Designs are built slowly through layering, adjustment, and testing, with particular attention given to colour, scale, rhythm, and how the artwork behaves once translated onto fabric. Repeats are constructed manually and prepared specifically for professional textile printing.

Jewellery pieces are created using sea glass and found materials shaped by time and environment. Each piece is one of a kind, embracing irregularity, variation, and the quiet beauty of materials with a history.

The jewellery practice reflects the same sensibility found in the artwork and textiles — an appreciation for imperfection, texture, and objects made to be worn and lived with.

Working with fashion, interior, and private clients internationally, my independent studio practice is currently based in Bali, where colour, landscape, and local craft traditions continue to inform the rhythm of my work.