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.
