Looking from Palmer St across Ross Ck
My work and the accompanying photo at the Townsville T150 Anniversary Celebrations Past in the Present which is on at the Sylvia Ditchburn Fine Art Gallery until 2nd October. This is an exhibition of heritage photos and current paintings of Townsville scenes.
Today, Prudence Terry and I made page 10 of the Townsville Bulletin. We are among several artists employed as roving artists by Townsville City Council’s gallery services as part of their promotion for the Glencore Percival Portrait Painting Prize at Perc Tucker Regional Art Gallery and the DUO Magazine Percival Photographic Portrait Prize at Pinnacles Art Gallery. In this picture, we’ve been hired to draw free portrait sketches at Cotters Market.
Graeme’s third novel, Jailbait, is now available at amazon.com. To find out more about the book and to read the chapter go to his blog site at Graeme Buckley Author Blog
Our exhibition, Benthos Illumination, is coming down on Monday, 10th April. Sunday is your last chance to see it and the other two excellent exhibitions accompanying ours, Tribal Odyssey and Fragments of Moments, so I urge you to visit Umbrella Studio
this week, if you haven’t already been. Graeme and I would like to send a big thank you to the special people who purchased our work.
Now that the frantic preparation to get our exhibition, Benthos Illuminated, hung at Umbrella Studios is over and we have time to ourselves at last, we went with a friend to Tyto Wetlands in Ingham. I took this photo, which was a happy accident, but needless to say, I am fairly pleased with it.
Hope you can make it along.
This 5cm piece of coral has such an imposing present that I nicknamed it Menhir. It’s shape reminds me of a standing stone.
Our exhibition is fast approaching. We’ve been busy framing (now I remember why I never used to frame anything!). It’s been great working in the studio downstairs at Umbrella among such a lovely group of people. I am so fascinated by the subject matter of our exhibition that although I haven’t got this exhibition finished yet I already feel the need to do another. Thanks to the artist’s residency from PressNorth and to the members of Umbrella Studio Access Group I have had a great time creating the work.
On the weekend, Graeme and I went back to the Jezzine Barracks end of Rowes Bay on another photographic expedition. We found a mermaid’s purse washed up above the low tide mark. Going by the smell, any baby shark that had lived in it was well and truly dead. Held up to the light, the rounded section of the purse was slightly transparent and amber coloured.
As part of my PressNorth residency at Umbrella Studios, I am creating a series of linocuts based on the benthos region (sea floor) of Townsville shores. Graeme and I went to Geoffrey Bay on Magnetic Island this week on another low tide excursion to take photos to inform our artwork. We have cheap waterproof cameras and we were taking underwater photos of coral, algae, and seaweed etcetera.
I was wading in the shallows, aware that it is now stinger season and that there are also stingrays about, when I heard a splash right next to my feet and saw a flash of white. I let out a yelp, half expecting a stingray barb to piece my leg but when I turned around, I found a dead barracuda, which was about forty centimetres long. I now don’t know what caused the splash or if, maybe, I even imagined it.
I am fascinated by the idea of miniature gardens in the sea. My prints aren’t scientifically correct drawings as, rather than representing the actual size of one specimen in relation to another, I use scale highly subjectively, depending on what aspect of the scene captures my attention the most.
In December, during the final month of my residency, I’m planning to print small editions of all my linocuts. So far, I have a dozen prints ready and I am looking forward to attending the Basil Hall workshop this weekend.
Arts Townsville 