How Wollongong’s Gillian Dinh has blended art and cuisine into a thriving career since MasterChef

Long before she graced the MasterChef kitchen or ran her own creative studio, Gillian Dinh was quietly crafting her future — one carefully drawn letter and perfectly chopped vegetable at a time.

Now, with her long-running creative studio The Marker and newly launched “Sip Sessions” workshops, she’s turned a lifelong love of food and art into a unique career.

It was during school, when other students doodled stick figures in schoolbooks, that a young Gillian was practising duplicating brand logos with surgical precision, her handwriting a canvas of colour-coded perfection.

“I was always obsessed with having very neat writing in school, and all my study notes were aesthetically pleasing, colour-coded, highlighted … ,” she said.

“That was pretty much the way I could memorise my notes, was to make sure they were written nicely enough.”

She would also spend hours practising her signature.

“Instead of doing the normal doodles that most people do during class time, like flowers and all that sort of stuff, I would try to duplicate brand logos,” she said.

“I got very good at it to the point where I could do it without looking at the actual design.

“That’s where I fell into that realm of design, like logos, designing, sign writing.”

Meanwhile, at home, the aroma of her mother’s Italian cooking and her father’s Vietnamese recipes filled every corner, transforming meal preparation from a chore into a cherished ritual of family connection.

“Before MasterChef, food stemmed from my family,” she said.

“I could smell the food just coming home from school every day, and it would always excite me.

“We were brought up in a household where cooking was never really a chore; it was more about togetherness and doing things for each other.”

Those childhood moments – spent hunched over study notes, carefully highlighting each line, or watching her parents transform raw ingredients into vibrant dishes – were quietly laying the foundation for a career that would seamlessly blend artistic expression with culinary passion.

“It’s basically just different canvases I’ve got,” she said.

“I’ve got hand lettering on walls or tattoos or on paper or canvases, but then I’ve got cooking, which is then into the kitchen and on a plate, and then I serve people.

“Basically, it translates very similarly, but it’s just a different outlet and different form, which I find it naturally quite easy to convert over to both.”

She studied textiles and interior design, and during school and later when friends got married or had kids, she would create stationery for them using lettering that had a feminine but edgy style, which was representative of her personality.

“It went from, ‘I could not only just do this for friends and family all the time’, to ‘I could probably make some money out of this and turn this into a job that I actually enjoy,’” she said.

“That’s when The Marker came about, and I started doing workshops, and then scaling up to murals and sign writing.”

While working on designs or lettering, in the background she plays cooking shows rather than music – especially MasterChef.

“I grew up watching the show – every season,” she said.

“My favourite pastime was watching cooking shows with my dad and my family in our family living room.

“So we watched it, and I thought I’d apply just on a whim and didn’t think anything of it.”

After appearing on MasterChef last year, Dinh has expanded her repertoire, now working as a part-time chef at Wollongong contemporary European restaurant K.malu Kitchen and Bar and doing live cooking demonstrations, food expos and workshops.

She’s also launched “Sip Sessions” workshops at venues Bavanda Bar in Wollongong and Perch Bar in Shellharbour Village, where participants learn painting or cooking while sipping on a glass of wine.

“I was taught to be a very intuitive cook,” she said.

“I never went to culinary school, and I walked into MasterChef with only using basically a blender and a slow cooker.

“So I think the best way to learn is to dive in the deep end and just get hands-on.”

With a love of teaching, she said you could learn so much from a plate of food, the process to get there and the heritage and culture behind it.

“If I can either educate through cooking workshops or just inspire people to cook, or … bring people together through food, then I’m ticking the box for me where I’m able to give back to something that gave so much to me,” she said.

She admits that to be able to achieve all she does means she gets little sleep.

“For now, my life is in the fast lane, and I’m just taking it on full steam ahead, with more gratitude than anything,” she said.

“I enjoy what I do, so I’m pretty blessed to be able to gain a profit and so much more beyond money, with my two passions of food and art.”

The workshops include Sip Sessions: Pasta Making at Perch Bar, Shellharbour Village on 9 April at 6:30 pm. See full dates and ticketing via her Instagram accounts – Gill Dinh and The Marker.