Artist+Profiles

= Artist Profiles =

**High Noon Shoalhaven, 1980's**
** // Technique // ** ** // Boyd was a master at manipulating elements to express himself. He developed new techniques when he was still a teenager and later changed technique depending on his preferred style, media, location and what he was depicting. // ** ** // He would often use loose strokes of thickly coated brushes. He applied paint with his fingers and palm because it is quicker, while the body contact directly connected him with the painting. He believed this allowed for a greater sense of freedom and pleasure from the act of painting. // **

Web sources: @http://www.galeriaaniela.com.au/Arthur%20Boyd.htm @http://www.articons.co.uk/boyd.htm

**Cahill Expressway, 1962**
Born In Adelaide but currently resides in Italy. Studied architecture in Adelaide and went on to study art in Paris. During his career, he has been an art critic, teacher and TV presenter.

Technique: Smart paints with oil, acrylic and watercolours, generally using the bold primary colours – yellow, blue and red – and dark greys for his skies.This creates an unusual effect in his works as the foregrounds of his paintings are fully lit despite the dark sky. He does preliminary drawings of his work and plays forms and shadows moving them around until he gets the perfect composition.

Web sources: @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahill_Expressway @http://www.australiangalleries.com.au/ag/artist/jeffrey_smart/ @http://www.etchinghouse.com.au/pages/artist_details.php?artist_id=76

**Ntange Dreaming, 1989**
Kngwarreye was a founding member of the Utopia Women's Batik Group which commenced operations in 1977. She started painting in her seventies—moving from batiks to acrylic on canvas in 1988. The direct application of acrylic paint on to canvas freed Emily's creative energies, and she began to make work that moved progressively further away from traditional designs. She seemed unhampered by the need to produce work that conformed to any set rule, or to continue to follow a path set by her own previous work, often producing sets of paintings in a particular style, then abruptly changing to explore new techniques and brushwork.In a brief eight-year painting career, Kngwarreye produced an extraordinary number of canvases, reputed to be as many as 3000—an average of a canvas a day.

Web sources: @http://nga.gov.au/exhibitions/Kngwarreye/index.html @http://cs.nga.gov.au/Detail-LRG.cfm?IRN=119248&View=LRG @http://www.waterhole.com.au/biography-menu/105-bio-emily-kame-kngwarreye

**Finding a Path to the Ocean, 2009**
Launceston artist Des Murray has been enjoying the Bay of Fires landscape since he was a child, and has captured them in a series of pastel paintings on this famed region. Des Murray has taught in Tasmanian art schools for 40 years, and has painted the coast in pastel as he feels it best captures the light of the area. "I like to paint first thing in the morning.The shadows and colours in the early morning are really special.The region really is stunning, with beaches that run for miles, and sculptural rocky forms with wonderful lichen on them. I look for the character of the place when I paint. I am not looking for a totally realistic representation of the Bay of Fires".

Web sources: @http://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2009/09/22/2693147.htm?site=&xml=2693147-mediarss.xml

Landscape with a morning touch of Wanyarang, 2006
Shane Pickett was born in 1957 in Quairading, Western Australia. His father belonged to the Jdewat people and his mother, the Balladong people. He had a true affinity and deep, spiritual understanding of the Nyoongar lands. He graduated from the Claremont Art School in 1983 however his first exhibition took place some 7 years earlier in 1976 when Pickett was just nineteen. Shane Pickett died suddenly on 15 January, 2010.

“I have learnt to read the songlines that journey through all living things across the entire landscape. I have sat down and watched the dusk infusion (the changing of day into night) and seen the colours of the sky and shadows move or merge into dreams of soft calming rhythms. I will always respect my cultural values, for the dreams do flow strongly through the views of my life.”

Websources: @http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/NIAT07/Default.cfm?MnuID=2&GalID=31003 @http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shane_Pickett @http://www.artgallery.wa.gov.au/exhibitions/documents/PickettCOPY.pdf

**Springbrook Waterfall, 1974**
Albert Tucker was born in Melbourne in 1914. In 1947 he traveled to Japan where he saw the devastation of Hiroshima - it was an experience that would have a profound effect on his work.After living in Italy for some years Tucker returned to Australia and began painting with a new understanding of his homeland. He was attracted to the Hinterland and lived in the Dandenong Ranges in Victoria, later buying acearage on the Gold Coast.

Tucker preferred to work in his studio rather than en plein air (outdoors) and used images from his memory as well as those directly from the landscape to create his images.

Web sources: @http://www.heide.com.au/downloads/HeideEdResource_AlbertTucker.pdf www.heide.com.au/downloads/Hinterlands.pdf

**Landscape, 1981**
Pro Hart was born in Broken Hill, NSW, Australia in 1928**.** Working mainly in oils and acrylics, Pro used any tool or method to achieve the desired outcome for his work. He drew upon techniques of layering, chiaroscuro, glazing, scumbling, scratching and Alla prima. Pro was also a sculptor working with welded steel, bronze and ceramics.

Pro Hart's work can be divided into two main categories; Formal and Narrative. At a formal level Pro is motivated by the aesthetics of a painting, employing conventions such as colour, shape, form, light and pattern that help to establish a sense of order within the picture plane. At a narrative level, Pro paints subjects such as Country Race Meetings, Picnics, Street Scenes and Portraits to communicate an idea to the viewer.

Web sources: @http://www.prohart.com.au/index.php Works on paper

**Water pond in a Landscape II, 1966**
[|Fred Williams]was born in Melbourne in 1927. At 16 he attended the National Gallery of Victoria Art School where he was trained in the formal disciplines of painting. During the 1950's Williams began etching and printing, studying the techniques at the Chelsea Art School and the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. He returned to Australia in 1957 and began painting the Australian landscape using modernist methods. Williams tilts the landscape so that the horizon line is often the only suggestion of recession.

His Australian landscapes are painted using oil or gouache. His choice of colour is limited yet clearly reflects the heat and harshness of the bush. In his later years, Williams painted seascapes and introduced an expanded palette into his work. He died at the age of 55 in Melbourne.

Web Sources: @http://www.fredwilliams.me.com.au/middle.html

**Rocks in Roper River, 1953**
Margaret Rose McPherson was born in Port Adelaide in April, 1875. She married William George Preston in December, 1919 and they settled in 1920 in Mosman, NSW. During the 1920's and 30's Preston became established as one of the most prominent artists of the time. She is well known for her woodblock printing, producing in excess of 400 prints during her career. Her work mainly comprised images of Australian flora. She preferred to hand-colour her prints and experiment with new techniques often resulting in bold, radical, colourful compositions.

Margaret Preston was a champion for ‘Australian’ art. She sought to portray the land with an understanding of Aboriginal spirituality and connection mixed with her love of Chinese techniques and painting style.

Web sources: @http://www.margaretpreston.info/ [|Margaret Preston images] @http://www.margaretpreston.info/life-work/

**There's a kookaburra hunting grasshoppers, 2009**
Nicola Chatham is a Queensland based contemporary artist. Her early works were abstract landscapes created in the studio. Her inspiration was drawn from her experiences of the Great Barrier Reef, rainforests and rural landscapes.

Her more recent works involve communicating with the audience through permanent ink on photographic images. These images document her explorations of her neighbourhood and the text sprawled over each represents an attempt to appreciate and remember more about her surroundings. “I’ve noticed beauty, connection and joy can be found in dutifully paying attention to details, whatever my surroundings are”.

Web Sources: //**Nicola Chatham**//

**TowerhilI II, 2007**
William McKinnon has studied art in Melbourne, Venice, France and London. He is a printmaker, collage artist and painter working with a range of materials including copper, oil paints and other mixed media. His most recent works include handpainted woodblock monoprints. Williams has an interesting way of collecting fragments of landscapes and materials to portray the Australian desert, mountains and suburbia.

Web Sources: @http://wmackinnon.com/ [|William McKinnon]

**Alakuki, 1995**
Hermannsburg is a small community approximately 130 kilometres west of Alice Springs. During the 1940's Rex Battarbee introduced watercolour landscapes to the Aboriginal people of this community. One man in particular, Albert Namatjira, became well known as an Australian watercolour landscape artist.

The potters of Hermannsburg have continued and developed this style of painting of their landscape to be a part of clay vessels which they sculpt.

"The urge to reach out and touch the earth is inseparable from Aboriginal life, whether peoplre are sitting, moving about their land or getting food. Often it is not even a conscious separation; people are part of the land and it interacts with them and their bodies. Clay is part of the skin of the earth itself."

Web Sources: [] @http://www.hermannsburgpotters.com.au/frames/main/artists/irene.htm

**Fields of Hope I, 2007**
Jeff Mincham was born in South Australia in the Coorong and Murray lakes region. This landscape inspired his early work and is one he continues to return to for his art.

Mincham uses a coil building technique for his works and creates landscapes by using different glazes in multiple firings. The textural appearance of some of his pots involves carving and gouging in repetitive patterns.

"There is something sublime in the experience of nature, between you and what you see, and that’s where the important art is." - Jeff Mincham

Web Sources: http://australianlandscapes.wikispaces.com/Education+Kits [] []

**Rowan leaves with Hole, 1987**
"At its most successful, my 'touch' looks into the heart of nature; most days I don't even get close. These things are all part of a transient process that I cannot understand unless my touch is also transient-only in this way can the cycle remain unbroken and the process be complete." -Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy works as an environmental sculptor - his work is ephemeral, transient. So that others may view the fleeting work he records the images using photography to capture the moment of art. He uses the landscape as his canvas and asks you to look at the delicate connections between the materials, shapes and textures that are found there.

Web sources: [] []

**Cypress Trilogy, 2010**
Leah Barclay is a young Australian composer who uses the sounds of the landscape to entertain and mesmerise her audience. Whilst her art is largely 'music' there is the accompanying 'installation' that completes the package. In Sound Mirrors Leah recreated a dark, almost damp and mossy area for the viewer to become a part of in order to truly appreciate her landscape image/sound work.

Sound Mirrors grew out of Ms Barclay’s life-long connection with rivers. “My childhood memories of growing up on rivers across Australia and living in countries such as India fuelled a desire to explore rivers as the lifeblood of communities. I wanted to find a voice for the rivers at a time where it is becoming increasingly important to listen to the environment.”

Leah’s dynamic work has resulted in numerous awards, including the Premier of Queensland’s inaugural National New Media Scholarship, the Asialink Performing Artist Residency for South Korea and the HELM Award for Environmental Art.

Web Sources: [] []