BLUE MOUNTAINS ARTISTS (2013)
Kayo Yokoyama, Blackheath
I have started engraving in 1997. It was a great encounter for new way to deal with glass. Make my own blank glass then work on the surfaces, using diamond tools to create new meaning. Glass is the unique material to work on and it has been giving me pressures to work on. I have done some traditional motives on the glass as well as new motifs.
Sarah Breen-Lovett, Katoomba
sarahbreenlovett.blogspot.com.au
Sarah Breen Lovett is an artist focused on the use of moving image installation to re-present our intricate and often overlooked understandings of the built environment... Through an anti-spectacle aesthetic, the moving image becomes a subversive tool to re-construct the subtleties of our inter-dependent and conditioned relationship to architecture.
Josh Honeyman, Katoomba
Jacqueline Spedding
Cascade Artist Studios, Lawson
jacquelinespedding.com
The process of memory is an ongoing concern in my practice. I am interested in how bodies shape objects and inhabit spaces, imbuing them with memory, and how we respond to and are shaped by these experiences. Much of my previous work, including my recent installation, titled Loess, is an exploration of these ideas.
Michael Hoffman
michaelhoffman.net.au
Fine art works in timber. Cascade Artist Studios, Lawson
Mandy Schoene-Salter
Cascade Artist Studio, Lawson. mandyschoenesalter.com
Mandy is a visual artist from the Blue Mountains working in the mediums of photography, public art installations, community art projects and mosaic murals. Mandy''s work is engaged with the complex and ongoing enquiry into human social behaviour. Her photographs aim to capture life from unique angles, by really getting to know her subjects personalities; she believes these alternate perspectives can make the difference between glimpsing someone’s deeper reality or just seeing their façade as we pass them on the street.
Ian Milliss, Linden
http://www.ianmilliss.com
Artists do not usually seek anonymity yet for many years Ian Milliss saw it as essential to the way he had chosen to work.
When Ian Milliss began exhibiting in the late 1960s at Sydney’s Central Street Gallery - the artist run centre of hard edged abstraction - his work consisted of modular, repetitive, geometric shapes grouped together to produce a series of ‘folding’ illusionistic canvases. Even these earliest of works done in his teens display his interest in ambiguity and multiple readings, the clash of illusion and reality that was to develop into the preoccupation of his entire career - the many ways in which we try to impose structure on a reality which is ultimately unknowable. Within the first few years he recognised art itself to be one of those illusory structures...
Linda Callaghan, Bullaburra
http://lindart1.redbubble.com/
Art is my inner voice and an extension of who I am." Drawn to watercolours with the unpredictable way they burst and mingle allows Linda to become a shape maker. Using vibrant layers of paint and ink techniques, her works border on the edge of fantasy, with magical energy showing the viewer an unreal world. Inspired by the earth''s beauty and the use of different mediums, Linda also captures the play of light and colour in sweeping landscapes, seascapes and many other subjects in a realistic style. Linda''s work has been described as ethereal, spiritually uplifting and totally in tune with nature.
Leanne Jones, Kurrajong
mellowcrest.com
Gabrielle Jones, Blackheath
www.gabriellejones.com.au
Her paintings are the external expression of the thoughts that occur as a personal running commentary on, or acknowledgement of, the unpredictability of life and the art world. The images derive from the artist’s life - the people, objects and sights found on the edges or periphery of consciousness, dislocated, presented and connected to each other in a new way.
Lyn McDougall, Medlow Bath
Lyn McDougall arrived in Australia as a migrant in 1978 from South Africa. She was inspired to paint after many adventurous trips around the African and Australian Bush and was fascinated by the Australian Landscape and intrigued by its similarity to South Africa.
Lyn tries to portray in her paintings the magic nature displays, from the vastness of the Simpson Dessert’s vibrancy to the soft tones of the Blue Mountains dancing in the mist. Her studio is her sanctuary overlooking the Megalong Valley in the Blue Mountains. Although Watercolour is her first love, she also uses other mediums, like Charcoal, Gouache and Oils. During her time as an Expat in Hong Kong, Lyn was taught the fundamentals of Chinese painting, which reflects in her watercolour paintings. Over the years, Lyn has been fortunate to have been tutored by Alvaro Castagnet, Margaret Wright, Jenny McNaughton to name a few.
Peter Shoemark, Wentworth Falls
On turning 55 and being given a grumpy old man’s book by Senior Management it was a bit of a wake-up shock. The pages about seeking a younger “sole mate” had been torn out and points about taking up a hobby or art had been highlighted, whilst pages on cleaning up your property had been tagged and marked “take note”.
At the same time pieces from the agricultural machinery and industrial waste collection of 30 years started to creep onto walkways.
One day the subliminal messages from Senior Management and the bruised toes clicked – trip art was invented. I found later that fiendish wives throughout the world had done similar things and that this form of old man therapy was known as; found art or junk art and for those too lazy to weld- assembled art.
The welder started attacking the metal stack and mufflers soon became penguins, truck springs changed to panthers. There was no stopping.
After filling the garden with sculptures, friends sternly started saying “no more”; it was time to trot around the Blue Mountain galleries.
Ten years later and still no noticeable reduction in the size of the scrap heap or amount of clutter, the creative challenge continues. No animal, person or belief could be considered sacred or beyond the scope of an aging welder gone feral.
The right brain challenge requires the writing of descriptive tags unique to each work, pushing social comment, occasional dry humour and a dash of cynicism all in the cause that art should be fun.
Works are now found throughout Australia and overseas, with strong interest in America, Canada and France.
Shoey’s combination of surrealism, animation and character influences provide a self assured approach to the discipline of sculpture, resulting in a unique range of works.