VISUAL ARTS
CELEBRATING OUR 2026 STUDENT DIARY ARTISTS
The McKinnon Student Diary is an essential tool for navigating your busy schedule, whether you’re jotting down homework reminders or planning a timeline to complete your learning tasks. Each year, we feature works by our talented Visual Arts students.
The feature artworks for the 2026 edition were selected to provide a welcome moment of quiet reflection in your day. Please enjoy discovering how and why each painting was created, in these statements from the artists themselves.
Ms Jessica Rogosic
Acting Learning Area Manager for the Visual Arts
Kassandra Vasilikakis
Poetic Warrior, 2025
Watercolour paint, watercolour pencil, acrylic paint, metallic paint pen and rhinestones
60cm x 40cm
This piece depicts the constellation Orion, known in Greek mythology as the hunter. The constellation has inspired artists throughout history, including Richard Henry Horne, who wrote the first three-book poem about Orion.
Set in the 1840s, this piece portrays Richard Henry Horne standing inside Lincoln’s Inn Library in Holborn, London, looking through a large window at the constellation. The three books he wrote about Orion can be found on the top shelves.
The piece was created mostly using watercolour paints; the metallic details were done with paint pens, the window frame is acrylic paint, and the stars in the constellation are small rhinestones glued to the piece.
Kassandra Vasilikakis, Year 11
Lucy Kaldor-Bull
Fishbowl, 2025
Gouache on Canvas
'Fishbowl' is a haunting meditation on the psychological reality of being isolated in plain sight.
The canvas is dominated by the paradoxical image of a figure trapped within a familiar glass sphere, a metaphor for self-imposed or emotional confinement. The principle of Emphasis is utilized to concentrate all visual energy on the girl; her body's intentional blurring and dissolution into the dark, aqueous environment illustrates the devastating feeling of fading away from reality.
The surreal subversion - goldfish swimming freely around the exterior - reverses the roles of observer and observed, profoundly stressing the central theme of loneliness. This visual inversion compels the viewer to confront the girl's experience, making her isolation the undeniable focus of the work.
Lucy Kaldor-Bull, Class of 2025
YEAR 7 ART DRAWING FOUNDATIONS
The Year 7s have arrived and they have launched themselves into Art with enthusiasm and vigour, learning foundational drawing skills.
Students learnt about observational drawing and used an object from life to complete two drawings. The first they completed without instruction. In the second drawing, students watched a demonstration and then were asked to apply symmetry through the use of an axis line and ellipses to describe a cylindrical form.
Context was added through the inclusion of a table line as well as some shadow where the object touched the table. Reflective annotations provided opportunities for the students to evaluate what they had done well and what needed to be worked on.
Each artist was able to use their observational and drawing skills in order to improve their work.
Kristy Soos
Visual Arts Teacher