visiting galleries, entering art prizes no.11

like anne of green gables said “when one door closes, a window opens somewhere else..” how the life can and does continue….i was so focussed and a lot was all about the exhibition for months. then gone. some people have said to me that i may feel a kind of loss, but i don’t really, maybe a little….. i am just keeping going, onto the next thing…

 this past week I visited two galleries, stella downer fine art in zetland and arthouse in rushcutters bay.  at stella I viewed the beautiful work of viola dominello, who captured the earthy colours deeply of the australian bush with sensitivity. she used abstract forms as representation of light and shape to show the scrubby undergrowth. and tree-forms that were so familiar to many of us who have ventured into bushland, it took me there. brilliant. it is so rare these days to delve into an artwork and go there.

i then sojourned to arthouse, what a space, so modern. here i viewed some wonderful paintings by kate bergin who like me is a still life artist, her work was so BIG and inspiring, she has such skill with the brush and has obviously spent hours at her craft, she paints animals on tables in various poses, almost comical. she even had such a unique thing, she framed her palette, that you could also purchase alongside of the artwork, i am unsure if i would by an artist palette. but for the art collector, well????

this year i have entered my work in three exhibitions thus far. one with the Mosman Art Gallery – Artists of Mosman, The Emerging Art Prize- Michael Reid and The Portia Geach- S H Irvine Gallery. entering into prizes is suggested and i feel all exposure is good exposure. so one out of three this year ain’t bad considering a pandemic and the world being upside down.

 way back when i was at art school and living near the sea i entered the artists of mosman 2088 exhibition at the Mosman Art Gallery, i was also a volunteer at the gallery in their little shop and worked as a waitress with the food at various openings, it was also a new gallery too, i believe it was the first year of the exhibition in the year 2000. over the years i have entered into it a couple of times and now it has become a selected exhibition which makes it a little more exquisite and unique to be chosen. so that was a tick…

secondly, as i was painting away for fleur de rouge i was inspired by my trip to the american museum of women artists (whom I have mentioned in my artblog before) and painted an interpretation of Rachael Ruysch, from the Dutch Golden Age 1680’s. i do love my painting of this as it was kind of like a dream i have had, this painting is all over the website at the moment…. and up popped on my instagram the emerging art prize with a similar dutch inspired painting as their advertisement, i took it as a sign, as i am emerging….i entered, but alas, to no avail, but am glad i get to keep it anyways…..

finally, last year i went with my friend erina to the portia geach exhibiton and i told her i would enter her portrait for 2021, completing this was an experiment, but I achieved the finished portrait, i had not done a real portrait from life, (like at art school) for a long time, and she is glad of the outcome, so as a painter, i am moving and growing and challenged, portraiture is hard, you want to get some essence of the sitter, i feel that if the subject likes the painting then that is a ‘win’ even if the portia people did not deem it so… just keep going, that is just what i do.

have a great week

tasha