It started off as a small space in a Mudgee café courtyard, and now husband and wife dream team Warwick and Toni Behrens run their own local art department for kids and adults.
Their ‘art classes’ business title morphed into The Mud Factory - a play on messy wet dirt, Mudgee and Andy Warhol’s New York studio name, The Factory. They have classes on drawing, painting, ceramics, printing techniques and other art mediums, as well as a stop motion studio.
“I tend to bounce off mediums like a distracted child … I like the playfulness of mixed media,” Toni told the Mudgee Phoenix. “My husband and I are both artists … we knew we were both creative, and we thought we would love to work for ourselves in a creative field, rather than for others.”
“We are very proud of the way things were done, and how the business was built,” she said.
The Mud Factory has a ceramics workshop on Mondays on Rocky Waterhole road, where Toni does adult classes in the morning, and one for kids in the afternoon.
Not only that, but they managed to enlist local artist and former teacher Michael Bourke to impart his knowledge of drawing and painting for kids at their 93 Market street studio.
Toni said she is passionate about kids enjoying art, and plugged the benefits of it in learning resilience – akin to getting back onto the proverbial horse.
“I like kids getting excited about the creative process, it’s meant to be fun, and it’s OK if it doesn’t work, sometimes we fail and that’s fine,” she said. “It’s an amazing thing to be creative, it helps you solve,” she said.
There are also online art classes available for all on their website, and people wishing to participate can contact her to get a painters’ kit to follow along with the tutorials.
