ABOUT KERRI
A Multi-Talented Creative Professional
With more than 30 years of experience across the creative industries, I have spent my life bringing ideas, characters and stories to life through many different artistic mediums.
My career has taken me from the world of Hollywood makeup and special effects to photography, wardrobe styling, prop making, graphic design, journalism, publishing and writing. While these may seem like very different creative disciplines, they have always had one thing in common, storytelling.
Whether I am creating a character, capturing a photograph, designing a magazine, styling a shoot or writing a screenplay, I have always been fascinated by the way an idea can be transformed into something that makes an audience see, feel or imagine something new.
Makeup, Special Effects & Wardrobe
My creative career began in makeup and special effects, an industry I worked in professionally for more than three decades, including many years in Hollywood.
Working across film, television, photography and entertainment gave me the opportunity to create everything from beauty and character makeup to special effects, helping transform performers and contribute to the visual world surrounding a production.
My work on shoots also extended into wardrobe styling, giving me an even broader understanding of how character, clothing, makeup, colour and visual detail work together to tell a story.
Those years behind the scenes taught me lessons about character, collaboration and visual storytelling that continue to influence my creative work today.
Photography & Prop Making
Photography has been a lifelong passion and has grown into a significant part of my professional career over the past 15 years.
My work has appeared across numerous publications and magazine covers, and I have photographed everything from portraits, fashion and editorial work to events, commercial projects and horses.
I have always been drawn to photographs that do more than simply record what is in front of the camera. I want an image to have atmosphere, emotion and a sense of story.
That same love of creating worlds led naturally into prop making, where I have designed and created detailed pieces for film, photography and print projects.
Journalism, Publishing & Graphic Design
For more than 20 years, I have worked in journalism and publishing, including covering major equestrian events and telling the stories of horses and people from across Australia and internationally.
My work within publishing eventually expanded far beyond writing.
For more than a decade I have worked professionally in graphic design, creating magazine layouts, advertising, branding, logos, promotional material and visual content for a wide range of clients and publications.
I have also been involved in launching magazines from the ground up, bringing together editorial direction, photography, writing, design and production.
Today, I am the Editor, Graphic Designer and Publisher of Arabian Horse Lifestyle magazine, where many of those creative disciplines come together in one role.
Writing & Screenwriting
Writing has always been part of my creative life, but in recent years it has taken me in an unexpected and exciting new direction.
After publishing my novel Santiago – The Keeper of Secrets, I began adapting the world and characters I had created for the screen.
My first television pilot, SANTIAGO, became my first screenplay.
What happened next was something I never expected.
The screenplay began receiving recognition through screenwriting competitions and film festivals in Australia and around the world, particularly in the United States. It has since received multiple awards, finalist placements and official selections, including Best TV Pilot and Best First-Time Screenwriter at the Melbourne International Screenplay Awards, Best First-Time Screenwriter at the LA Film & Documentary Awards, and further recognition in Los Angeles and internationally.
Receiving that response to my very first screenplay gave me the confidence to take the next step and begin developing SANTIAGO for the screen.
What started as a story inspired by a very real Arabian horse has now grown into a much larger creative project, bringing together my experience in writing, horses, photography, production design, makeup, visual storytelling and film.
I am currently developing a SANTIAGO short film as a proof of concept, taking the story from words on a page towards something audiences can finally experience on screen.
Where Creativity Has Led Me
For many years, I described myself as someone who worked across a lot of different creative fields.
Today, I realise those fields were never really separate.
Makeup taught me character.
Wardrobe taught me how appearance helps tell us who someone is.
Photography taught me composition, light and emotion.
Graphic design taught me visual communication.
Journalism taught me how to find the story within someone's experience.
Publishing taught me how to take an idea and turn it into something tangible.
And writing and filmmaking have given me somewhere to bring all of those skills together.
I continue to work professionally across photography, graphic design and publishing, while developing the next chapter of my creative career through writing and filmmaking.
This website is a collection of that journey, from the work I have created over more than three decades to the new stories I am only beginning to tell.
And right now, one of the most exciting of those stories is SANTIAGO.
