2013 Exhibiting Artists
Below are some examples of works from some of the artists who are exhibiting in the 2013 Seascape and Beyond Art Exhibition.
Please note that the examples don't reflect relative sizes.
Dianne Pacey
Dianne is an amateur photographer and has lived by and has loved the ocean all her life. For the past 10 years she has been a keen SCUBA diver and more recently has discovered the great pleasures of photographing the beautiful and intriguing creatures of the ocean.
Janelle Cookson
Janelle started out as a folk/decorative artist going to art classes once a week as a hobby and for relaxation. It was there that she found her passion and talent for painting. Taking what she learned in class, Janelle began her own path broadening her style and technique. Now with almost 10 years’ experience and a lot of inspiration from her travels to South East Asia, she is painting professionally and teaching children, using acrylic, acrylic ink and mixed media.
Yvonne Barnett
Yvonne was born in Sydney and after her children left home she travelled extensively with six years on the Grawin opal fields mining for opals, painting and capturing the majestic landscape - the charm of the opal fields, the minors' camps and the old timers' diggings. Eventually she settled in the beautiful Lake Macquarie region, where she seriously undertook further studies of water-colours and specialises in waterscapes, landscapes, floral art, birds and portraits.
Katrina Mason
Katrina has recently returned to Newcastle after extensive travel and study abroad. Most recently she completed one year tuition and mentoring with an accomplished female artist and Art Therapist in Amsterdam. With extended career experience in the Community Services Industry, she is naturally drawn to the exploration of emotion for different individuals. Katrina tries to use colour and line in her portraiture to directly reflect her interpretation of the person’s moods, challenges, emotions and resilience, and has found the creative process of immense value for not only herself but the person sitting for her.
Wendy Lesniak
Wendy has been painting seriously for the past 13 years, mainly in water colours. She likes to paint local scenes but does like a wide variety of subjects, from wildlife to flora. She is very involved in the art world and is the treasurer to the Newcastle Art Society. Wendy exhibits all over the Hunter Valley and has won many awards. Her greatest achievement was winning first prize in the traditional section at the Singleton Art Show 2010 with a prize of $2000.
Melissa Baldwin
Melissa's work has been exhibited in local galleries over the last few years with favourable reviews. Most recently her sculpture “Drain Fed” won the 2012 LiveSites “Waste Knot” competition. As well as sculpture, Melissa works in a variety of mediums, from pastel drawings to oil paintings with her subjects being mostly landscapes and flora. Expressive linear qualities and semi-abstraction make an appearance in some works, while others, such as her prints, have a simplified realist approach relating back to her graphic design roots.
Jenny Elks
Jenny has 15 years experience in watercolour painting and is a member of both the Newcastle Art Society and the Society of Artists. She has won several awards exhibiting with both these societies and is featured in the 2012 Society of Artists calendar. Jenny particularly enjoys painting water scenes as well as birds.
Gavin Fry
Gavin studied at Caulfield Technical College and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 1965-67, in order to pursue a career as a teacher and art lecturer. In 1980 he became Senior Curator of Art at the Australian War Memorial and over the next 30 years worked in a number of high level administrative positions in Australian museums. He graduated with BA Hons and MA in Visual Art from Monash University and a Master of Philosophy in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester. The author of fifteen books on Australian art, Gavin has returned to painting in his retirement in Newcastle.
Daniel Joyce
Daniel is a devoted father, husband, fisherman, surfer and artist from Caves Beach, just south of Newcastle. He loves nothing more than stretching a large canvas and painting a beachscape or surfbreak that he has travelled overseas to, lived at, just photographed... or sketched from his imagination. Portraits and caricatures come next!
By checking out his website or facebook page ‘danieljoycedesign’ you will discover the many styles and applicaitons of his work... with his latest piece quite often the finest!
Vivienne Nelson
Vivienne has been exhibiting in Newcastle for 15 years, concentrating on changing urban and industrial landscapes. She was trained at East Sydney Tech in the 1960s and then moved to Fiji for the next 10 years where she taught the first group of art teachers for the government, and worked as a teacher for the Fiji Arts Council and at the International School in Suva. Vivienne likes the immediacy and freedom of drawing with a bamboo pen with the addition of water color washes.
Shelley Cornish
Some people are more talkers and thinkers, however Shelley is a watcher and a listener, and loves to paint people and capture those everyday intimate moments we all see and experience through our own eyes. You will find people and those moments in most of the art she does and hopes their faces, posture and eyes tell you a story of their own. Shelley paints at home every chance she gets and enjoys exploring many different styles and techniques. She can see her own style evolving and likes to push herself out of her safe zones and just keeps reaching. She has found her addiction and is amazed at how she can love it more each day and considers herself forever a student of art.
Roger McFarlane BFA
Roger has a bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Newcastle NSW, and trained in Italy to learn marble carving skills. He has been fortunate to be invited to create public sculptures in Australia, South Korea, China, Brazil and Switzerland. Roger works mostly in stone, such as marble and granite as well as bronze casting. He enjoys the process and the challenge of creating an art work from strong materials. Roger says sculptures have to have a well finished appearance.
Saretta Fielding
Saretta has always painted, drawn and experimented in a variety of art mediums, as art has always been a passion for her. She is a contemporary artist and endeavours to communicate within her artwork a connection to spirit, community and country.
Michael O’Neill
Drawing and painting has been a lifelong passion of Michael. He has drawn comics, painted watercolours and produced animated films over many years. As a long time surfer Michael has a love of the ocean and enjoys painting the amazing colours that nature provides in and around the water and along coastlines. He now paints mostly in oils and acrylics and has become interested in painting portraits.
Rohan Harvey
Rohan has worked on the Red carpet as a photographer for the ‘ARIA’ awards in Sydney and at ‘Groovin the Moo’ music festival in Maitland and has had his photos in a couple of exhibitions resulting in many sales. Rohan really enjoys taking landscape scenes which revolve around a water theme. He is inspired by the well known Australian photographers Ken Duncan and Steve Parish.
Jane Gilchrist
My art is always about respect for the environment, so I use mostly recycled materials in the artwork and the frames. I produce 2D artworks, nailing or gluing old weathered metals on to boards. I also use organic glue, so that the work is safe to live with (and dispose of). The content of my pictures is rather more varied… memories of places, birds and animals, boats, dogs, the human figure, iconic images, etc. The styles range from abstract to naturalistic and very realistic. And colour, colour, colour!
Margo Humphries
Margo has been based in Newcastle since 2003 and established Kasarn Designs in 2009. She began painting at a young age. Margo was selected as one of 10 artists for the Mattara Festival’s outdoor art exhibition in 2011. Margo is passionate about art and she is known for her painterly style and vibrant canvases.
Therese Wilkins
Therese started on her art journey in 2000 and continues that journey having achieved a Diploma in 2012 at Hunter TAFE. She says "I am on an art road and have been introduced to techniques, people, ideas, colour, light and media. I take with me on that road my own life experiences - both past and present, my senses and a desire to combine what I learn with what I know to create impressions or contemporary images."
Lorraine Tindall
In 1990 Lorraine saw an advertisement for TAFE Art in the newspaper which she applied to and was selected for Seaforth TAFE. With five years of painting, sculpture, photography, visiting galleries, writing assignments and exhibitions she then did an extra year of sculpture at Meadowbank TAFE. In 2001 she attended Hunter Street TAFE doing an extra year of painting. Since then she has worked from her home studio working steadily on numerous paintings and sculptures, exhibiting, selling and occasionally winning competitions.
Diana Baker
The colours, textures and light of the Australian landscape, its myths and history, continue to challenge and inspire Diana. She is always searching for the “spirit of place” rather than a literal translation of what she sees before her. Diana's method of working continues to evolve on an almost daily basis and she loves to experiment with different methods and materials. Resolution of the initial start often takes weeks or months before a painting comes together. However, it is the ‘doing’ which is important to her, not the end result. The many moods of ‘Terra Australis’ provide a never-ending source of inspiration to Diana.
Jake Randle
Jake first discovered a love for photography two decades ago. Entirely self-taught, his interests lie primarily in landscape and nature photography. Through his images, Jake seeks to capture the delicate balance between nature’s unique beauty and its awesome, unrelenting power. Having lived the majority of his life in Newcastle, the ocean has provided a natural canvas on which to examine these themes.
Claire Locker-Potter
Claire spent the past thirty years as a potter traveling Australia and the globe, combining studio work, exhibitions, lecturing and academic teaching in ceramics. Before recently moving to Newcastle she lived for ten years in regional NSW and found her creative spirit expanding and reproducing itself into her 'dancing ceramic forms’. The teapot and cups are made in the soft slab technique. The clay has been rolled, decorated with clay colours then formed into the teapot. This is a very precise way of working as the slabs are only 1 to 2mm thick and are very fragile. They have been fired to 1120° in a gas kiln with a clear glaze.
Jon Wilks
Jon graduated in 1995 from the University of Newcastle with a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Arts. Jon optimizes a variety of techniques in his paintings, drawings, and sculpture. Emotional experiences and connective energy are expressed through these mediums. His creative images are manifested symbolically and organically through intuitive processes. He enjoys using a variety of mediums in all areas. He draws upon a successful and evolving creative background along with leadership experiences in a heavy engineering and industrial environment.Jon is Newcastle born and his range of works cover highly intense figurative and landscape content to totally abstracted colourful works.
Ben Treverton
Ben’s a British photographer who’s lived in Europe, Asia and Africa, before being imported to Newie by his Aussie wife.Specialising in weddings, portraiture and beaches, he can be found on Newie’s stunning coastline most mornings capturing shots for his beach+life photo blog online, and as a free e-mail: www.bentreverton.com/beach-plus-life. When not armed with clunky cameras, you might catch him splashing like a loon with his 2-year old daughter, at Merewether Ocean Baths.
Leslie Duffin
Leslie began painting as a child under the watchful eye of her father, artist Neil Stein. She began studying at Hunter TAFE in 2010 and graduated in 2012 with an Advanced Diploma of Fine Art. After being part of several group exhibitions in Newcastle over the past 3 years, her first solo exhibition “Snippets” was held at Newcastle Art Space in February this year. In 2012 Leslie received first prize for Works on Paper at the Newcastle Show and her work was selected for the Gosford Art Prize and the Newcastle Emerging Art Prize.
Kerri Smith
Kerri is fascinated with Newcastle. Whereas most see the city as tired and rundown, she sees a distinct urban community with character. Its unique culture as well as a plentiful selection of iconic structures, provides possibilities in regard to her art making process, seemingly endless. Kerri's first solo exhibition at Truevision Gallery Redhead was held in October 2012. She is now working towards another solo exhibition in October 2013.
Loredana Famularo
Loredana, a dedicated wife and mother of two girls, grew up as a child on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. Along with her family, Loredana moved to the Central Coast 15 years ago. “Many elements of my pieces are hand collected and may take years to find, and then spending time to reproduce their beauty as works of Art, is most rewarding”
Julie Baigent
Since Julie’s exhibition, ‘Newcastle, a place with character’, two years ago at Back to Back Gallery, Julie has been selling prints of the paintings each month at The Olive Tree Market. People love images of their home town and Julie is happy to be participating in the Seascape and Beyond Art Exhibition and Fundraiser. She has been painting and photographing all her life and has had many exhibitions in the Byron Bay area before moving to Newcastle.
Elizar Mytka
Having been awarded her first mural commission at the age of 15, Elizar has painted murals in Sydney, Newcastle and Byron Bay as well as her own personal and commissioned art works. Art has been a vehicle for Elizar to overcome abuse in early childhood and she believes that the creation of art can be therapeutic for people and children who suffer from inner turmoil, helping to express feelings and hopes that there are sometimes no words for.
Meredith Woolnough
Meredith is an award winning visual artist that works and lives in the heart of Newcastle. Her practice engages with the natural environment utilising the skeletal frameworks of flora and fauna as the basis of her own embroidered specimens. Meredith uses an innovative form of embroidery to create her delicate artworks. Threads are densely stitched into freeform sculptures that are carefully pinned to paper preserving them as delicate handmade artifacts. Her work explores themes of the interconnectedness of living things and environmental degradation.
Cliff Hosking
Cliff says, about his paintings,“I am trying to convey the beauty of light interacting with the atmosphere and solid objects in its path. A scene looks different every hour during the day and with the passing of seasons. Watercolour, that magic mixture of pigment, paper and water, gives me the tools to produce the vision I have in my mind”.
David Grigg
Growing up in an area as diverse as the Hunter Region, surrounded by the lake, ocean, forests and mountains meant that there was always something interesting and challenging to photograph and something to learn. David's true passion and favourite subject is the waves and the ocean.
Mark Smith
Mark has been painting water colours for thirty years. He is self-taught and paints river and beach views. Mark has won first prizes in rural agricultural art shows. He lives in Newcastle and paints for fun.