Shirley Bourne studied drawing and painting at the National Gallery of Victoria under William Rowel and William (later Sir William) Dargie. She won the Dora Wilson Travelling Scholarship, which enabled her to visit Sydney for several weeks where she painted and drew. She also visited and formed contacts with established painters there, including Will Ashton, Roland Wakelin and Frank and Margel Hinder.

Shirley worked as an assistant in William Dargie’s studio for some years before concentrating on her own career more fully. For two years she lived in London, visiting art collections and galleries while painting in both England and on the Continent.

On her return to Australia, Shirley set up her own studio, painting portraits and working towards exhibitions which she held in Melbourne, Canberra, Adelaide and Launceston. During these years she exhibited regularly in the Archibald Prize competition. She also travelled widely, painting in the United Kingdom, Europe, the United States, Canada, Mexico and Guatemala. The latter two Meso-American countries she found of great archaeological interest, and considered the art there both colourful and expert. She was also impressed by the decorative folk art, which utilised materials such as tin, copper, glass and coloured paper.

Shirley Bourne has painted portraits in Sydney and Melbourne, generally staying with Roland Wakelin and his wife when in Sydney, and utilising his studio. She has previously been commissioned to paint portraits in England, one being of the Duchess of Richmond and Gordon. Besides portraiture, her work covers landscapes and still life - both areas of painting in which she has won several important prizes. Her painting is represented in the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Commonwealth Collection, the Canberra War Memorial, the Victorian Parliament, and in major provincial galleries in Langwarrin, Bendigo, Mildura and Rockhampton. It is also found in numerous institutional and private art collections both within Australia and overseas. In 1979 the McClelland Gallery, a State Regional Gallery, staged a major retrospective exhibition of her work entitled “Shirley Bourne - A Survey”.

Shirley has always been concerned with encouraging others in the field of art, and has been a member of four Art Societies, actively teaching in two of them. She has also published a series of articles in the British Magazine “The Artist” dealing with portraiture and the art of painting flowers. She has also been featured in several Australian publications including “History of Melbourne Society of Women Painters and Sculptors”. After teaching at the Victorian Artists Society she was awarded a plaque for “Twenty years’ Exemplary Teaching Service”. Since then she has become a Fellow of that Society and was awarded the distinction of being made an honorary Life Member.

In speaking of her painting Shirley says: “My continuing interest and pleasure in painting from nature increase the more I paint and the longer I live. One of the reasons for this is the enormous range of subject matter available: figure and portraits with their variety of personal appearance, dress and pose, their singularity or multiplicity; landscapes with a range so wide it encompasses the world, with the added variety of season and time of day; still life, complicated or simple, and the beauty and colour of flowers.

“Flowers I consider to be almost as difficult to paint well as it is to paint portraits.
In painting from nature I try to use the natural attitude or look of the various subjects: the figure in a natural looking pose, even if it takes a long time to set up that pose; flowers looking as if they are alive and growing; and landscapes organised only by my original choice of subject matter.”