Friday Friends - Local Artists - Anne North

Happy Friday once again lovely readers. What have your collective weeks held? I have nothing really to report from Maddabling HQ, life is busy and the weather still chilly. This week I have a special guest blogger; (it's always nice to feature a friend) meet a very talented local artist and advocate for local arts - Anne North! 

The art that Anne creates is close to my heart, featuring our beautiful coastline, forests and native flora. We are trying to create a "modern" garden at our place, with a focus on local native plants and we like to walk the coastal walk trails, so you can understand why these pieces resonate so strongly with me. 

Read her story for yourself and see more of her beautiful paintings below. I now hand over the blogging reigns for Anne to tell you more about her work. Have a wonderful weekend everyone, see you all on Sunday (promise I won't forget) for the weekend blog post xo♥ Happy Reading! 

The Anne North Diaries

What is the real reason of painting? I do not feel any real need to prove my ‘hobby’, a hobby that I really don’t feel I have any control over. I do know of people who are hobby artists – they paint when they have a free moment; they have their lovely studio, they paint what is pretty – nothing wrong with that. 

I wish I could be like that; my studio ends up being the whole house, oil paints all over the kitchen table, easels and canvases spread across the lounge floor. For me painting has always been a compulsion that hits my brain and goes on for as long as I am in the ‘zone’. 

Something that I do know is that on some level I want to connect to nature. A statement that could not be more twee. But after painting all my life I have come to realize that there is nothing wrong with being ‘the sentimental bloke’ As a human I do not ‘have’ feelings, I ‘am’ my feelings – everything else is just chemicals and flesh.

And this is what it all comes down to, a need to express physically how those feelings connect to this outside, experiential world. I paint my Karri trees and Southern forests in a translucent manner, which requires many glazes, this shows their transitory temperament on this earth, just like ourselves – its something that we share. The physical is nothing, everything is just spirit.

To the more mundane – I had my first solo exhibition was at ‘The Arts House Gallery’ in Northbridge in 1990, and have been exhibiting in solo and group shows ever since. For the last few years I have been involved in a ‘pop-up’ shop with a number of other local artists. We do the shop just before Christmas to make a few bucks, deliberately making small and cheap hand made art products, to great success. I am on a number of committees, the most important being Newarts, which organize ‘Sculpture in the Harbour’ – a sculpture exhibition that has the sculptures embedded into the shoreline of the Princess Royal Harbour. 

I also have fun being involved in the local roller derby group, for which I am Secretary.