Table of contents for Issue 35 in Creative Artist

Michelle is a nature artist from Brisbane who has just spent the last year living in England and travelling throughout Europe. It was an amazing experience for her in so many ways, but from an artist’s perspective, it was an invaluable opportunity to immerse herself not only in the art and culture of the cities, but in the wilderness and nature that she loves so much. Drawn to wild and remote places, Michelle visited an amazing variety of landscapes over her time away - ranging from the frozen world of the Swedish Lapland hundreds of kilometres above the Arctic Circle, to the jagged Monserrat mountains in Spain; from the rugged coastline of Cornwall to the wind-swept Orkney Islands and the Isle of Skye, which looked as though it could have…

“Whenever a fairytale is told, it becomes night. No matter where the dwelling, no matter the time, no matter the season, the telling of tales causes a starry sky and a white moon to creep from the eaves and hover over the heads of the listeners. Sometimes, by the end of the tale, the chamber is tilled with daybreak, other times a star shard is left behind, sometimes a ragged thread of storm sky. And whatever is left behind is the bounty to work with, to use toward the soul-making,” Clarissa Pinkola Estees. Jungian analyst and storyteller Clarissa Pinkola Estees speaks of the power of storytelling. It is the oldest art form, and the way primitive people made sense of their lives from the very first drawings etched on cave…

“When life gives up on you, never give up on living!” Neil Sweeny Born in Newcastle in 1959, Neil was part of the “Caucasian” Stolen Generation. His adopted family life wasn’t easy. He was given to a war-bride family and both adopted parents suffered with PTSD. His father had ailing health due to war injuries which caused significant conflicts in the family home. Neil was often bullied at school because of the adoption, but would always find solace in drawing and painting. At age 12 he was introduced to music and studied violin at the Newcastle Conservatorium of Music under the tutelage of Virtuoso Errol Collins. Despite receiving high marks in his IQ testing scores, Neil never achieved good academic results during his schooling. To escape the trauma of his…

Materials List • Canvas 120 x 75cm • Bristle brushes flat ¾”, flat 14 • Sable brushes 5/0, 0, 1, 2, 4, 6 • Taklon detailer 5/0 • Sable liners 2/0, 5/0 • Bosch heat gun • Art Spectrum Odourless Solvent • Genesis Heat-set Permanent Satin Varnish • Genesis Heat-set paints: – Titanium White – Phthalo Blue – Cobalt Blue – Payne’s Grey – Permanent Green – Dioxazine Purple – Burnt Sienna – Bismuth Yellow Step One With wildlife paintings, I like to be very accurate with the features and proportions of the animal so that it is represented authentically and realistically. However, with a subject like waves, although I like it to look as though you could feel the splash, I can afford to be a bit looser! Consequently,…

Materials List • Golden Acrylic Paints – Ultramarine – Burnt Umber – Antique White – Titanium White – Raw Sienna – Quinacridone Crimson – Aliziran Crimson Hue – Cadmium Red Medium – Cadmium Yellow Medium Hue – Green Gold – Iridescent Bronze • Variety of fine brushes ranging from 000 to a Neef 970 Round • Glass palette (I always use a glass palette for acrylic paint as the paint doesn’t stick to the glass and is easy to wipe off wet or scrape off dry) • 20cm round board • Porters Paint to prime my board Step One I have recently been working on a suite of animal portraits within the historical genre of portrait paintings. In the eighteenth century, there was a growing interest in individual psychology, as…

Morning Falls was created from a reference photo sent to me by an art friend from Newcastle. The photo was taken somewhere between Kurri Kurri and Pokolbin in NSW. Step One Using Pencil tool 1 – 3, I will define shapes and set out my workspace in preparation for base painting. My reference photo usually sits on a second screen (laptop) beside me. Step Two After creating my pencil outlines I like to paint from left to right across a canvas using a defined grid work area. I cut and paste the same area of the reference photo and put it adjacent to my workspace. To begin, I will select a series of grey and black tones to lay in some foundation colour for depth, and then compare the graded…

The wealth generated by gold and a burgeoning agricultural hinterland, coupled with a general sense of optimism that permeated the colony of Victoria during the 1880s were the main factors behind the timing of the Gallery’s founding. This boom-time ethos caused the arts to flourish throughout the young colony. This was the decade when Tom Roberts, Fred McCubbin and Louis Abrahams founded what would in time be perceived as Australia’s first ‘national’ school of painting - the Heidelberg School. Within five years, they had not only started building up a great collection of art, but had erected a purpose-built art gallery on a site in the centre of Ballarat. Ballarat was not the only gallery to have been founded in regional Victoria in the late nineteenth century, but it was…

Today we’re visiting rural Western Australian artist Catherine Kelley on her three hectare horse property, about 45 minutes’ drive south of Perth, where she lives with her husband and teenage children, horses, and a slightly scatterbrained dog (not the ones painted here). Within a few minutes of my visit, I realised that life for Catherine revolves around her family and her agisted horses’ wellbeing, and its only after these that her art takes over. Starting outside, we walked around some of the outbuildings and stables, and I thought an opening photo of Catherine with one of her horses would make a great start to this My Space article, as a photo with a horse would say more about Catherine than any words could. The easy way Catherine talked to and…