The waters of Balmoral, the parks of Mosman, the leafy reserves of Clontarf — nature in all its glory is where they get their best ideas.

This is home to their inspiration. And it’s how they start every day.

It was on a recent walk that the trees lining Mosman’s Allan Border Oval inspired the pair’s latest photographic work.

The Sacrifice featured muse LA-based Avalon actor Danielle Macdonald, who has had blow up success in America with films like Dumpling, where she starred alongside Jennifer Aniston.

“As we finish our exhibition in Mosman, our next piece to start the new chapter will also be from Mosman,” Lloyd said.

Spencer, 35, and Lloyd, 31, grew up on top of their parents’ other baby, Harvey Galleries. Art was in their blood, and all around them. They fondly recall bringing down dinner to their artist parents Skii and Trevor as they worked through the night.

“The biggest lesson we learnt from Mum and Dad is that nothing comes easy and you must work hard for anything you want in life — and we definitely work hard,” Spencer said.

“I still remember watching our parents working hard until 11pm and we would bring down spaghetti while we were in high school when they were working late.

“We would go on big trips where we would all pile into the truck and take art to rural communities — they have taught us that hard work is the only thing that will get you to where you need to be.”

The sibling’s latest project, The Poetry Series, was 13 images envisaged, created and curated by the pair, set with a verse of poetry. They have been exhibited in the National Portrait Prize and short-listed as semi-finalists in The Moran Photographic Prize. They also showed the series at Harvey Galleries — an invitation to exhibit coming by formal email no less — and just released The Sacrifice, image number 14, the week after it closed to the public.

“We got this email — a very official and professionally worded email — saying ‘we would like to officially extend an invitation to exhibit in 2019 calendar year’ and all that kind of famous language from Mum and Dad,” Spencer laughed.

“We have been blown away really by the response because it was this art project we wanted to do for ourselves because we spend a lot of our time with our writing in development with executives and creatives.

“Other people are in charge of the process whereas … this is us.

“And we just revelled in it and have enjoyed it so much.”

Lloyd said the three-year passion project — which was born on a particularly fruitful Mosman walk — will continue, with the goal to take the series to image 100 and beyond.

“When the series first started, we didn’t necessarily know what it was going to be or how far it would go, but it started to take its own shape and form as we created piece after piece and then it became very clear what it was,” Lloyd continued.

“The milestone is piece number 100 — if we can get there and keep going that would be a nice place to get to.

“It has also been an interesting circle of life moment when we were standing in our opening night from behind the scenes gallery crew, to now being the artist.

“It kind of feels like a step into the mirror moment.”

The siblings, who finish each other’s sentences and clearly see the world through the same lens, not only work together day in and day out, they both live next door to the gallery that housed them as children.

“We didn’t fly far from the nest,” Spencer laughed.

“I think also living above, watching your parents work and build a business together, teaches you how to work creatively in a partnership, which I think is something we learnt very early on.

“Almost to the point that we didn’t see that other people did it differently — that was kind of the world we knew … and when we found out that people didn’t work with their sibling, we went — ‘oh really’.”

But it wasn’t always art. Spencer studied Law and Psychology and Lloyd went to film school. When they both finished their uni trajectories, they came together and realised they wanted to tell stories — that was 11 years ago.

“I always wanted to write from a young age and so we kind of ended up sort of realising that what we had in common was that we both wanted to be story tellers, whether that’s through our photographic work or through our writing for film or television,” Spencer explained.

“We just knew we loved stories, loved making them up, watching them, reading them. “We wanted to be part of that.

“I was complaining to Mum saying ‘I want to be a writer and make art and these are these are the things I want to do’ and Mum would say ‘focus on your passion’.

“I don’t think many other parents were saying ‘go follow the road less travelled and take the risk’, but they were both telling us to go for it.”

Spencer and Lloyd came to renown for their screenwriting work when they won an Academy Nicholl Fellowship in 2016 from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Their film Photo Booth is currently with an Australian producer and will soon go out to cast. They also pitched a script for a one-hour television dramedy series based on their experience in the Australian art world, and have since been commissioned by Chernin Entertainment and AMC/Sundance channel.

“It’s kind of getting into an exciting jump now … they did Walking Dead and Mad Men and they are very excited about this,” Spencer said.

“We are hoping that continues to move forward as it has been and it will be on TV soon … you never know with these things, but it has been a very exciting process working at this high level.”

If developed, the show will be based on Spencer and Lloyd’s upbringing, and mirrors a lot of their reality — even down to brother and sister protagonists, who are both gay.

“It is based in a Sydney contemporary gallery what is also a family business, which is modelled on our family life and the world we have grown in,” Lloyd said.

“It is also a queer show, in the sense that both the brother and sister, like us, are both gay.

“We have two gay protagonists with the parents who are both heterosexual who are exploring what love and life means to them.

“It’s a dramedy, exploring relationships which should be lots of fun, heartbreaking and informative … it should be all the things and hopefully be a really great show that reflects Australian life and a bit behind the curtain of that Australian art world too.”

They encouraged the youth of the north shore to consider art as a career path if that’s where their interests and talents lay.

“In this area I think that we are often focused on for our sports and other great achievements, because we are so close to the beach and the kids are in nippers and everyone is doing wonderful activities,” Spencer said.

“I think we have to foster our artistic community locally as well, because this is also part of our local legacy.

“I’m hoping the next generation will get into these very exciting array of options.”