Saturday, February 25, 2012

LAUNCHED


My book FOR EVERYONE: WORDS AND PAINTINGS was launched on Thursday night. And it was a fantastic night too. Scott Emerson MP, Queensland State Member for Indooroopilly and Shadow Minister for the Arts [as well as Transport and Multicultural Affairs] launched FOR EVERYONE. Around 90 people came to the event, on a miserably wet night too. Thank you to all of you!

I've uploaded some photos of the exhibition and some from the launch.

The exhibition showcases the thirty original paintings inside FOR EVERYONE. Click here for more details.




The exhibition is at FireWorks Gallery 52A Doggett St, Newstead, Brisbane.
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Friday 10 am - 6 pm Saturday 10 am - 4 pm
07 3216 1250

Good News!!!
The exhibition has been extended until Friday March 2nd! Thursday night extended to 7.30 pm!

Achievement, Alone, Excitement Within, Asleep: All gouache on paper

Dare to Be, Behind The Mask, Inspiration Calling, Disappearance: All gouache on paper

 Keyhole, Listen, Inner Child, Beyond The Boundaries: All gouache on paper

Now to some photos from the launch night!

Me with Scott Emerson MP...and FOR EVERYONE

Speech making Me with Scott Emerson MP and the Director of FireWorks, Michael Eather watching.

Scott Emerson MP, Me and Director of FireWorks Gallery, Michael Eather.


Book sales are going really well. Two people returned today to buy more books! Plus a number of people who could not get to the launch came along today and bought books.

Please click HERE for more details about FOR EVERYONE...where to buy etc. It is available online many online book selling sites plus GOMA and Queensland Art Gallery Bookstores.
It is also available as an e-book...BUT only in colour in the USA with a Kindle Fire

Cheers,
Kathryn

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

INSIDE FOR EVERYONE

Alone Gouache on paper 28 x 37.6 cm

BOOK LAUNCH UPDATE

It is one week until my book For Everyone: Words and Paintings is officially launched! Whilst it was published in Sept/Oct last year I decided not have a launch in the middle of Christmas mayhem and partying. So, next week it is! Thursday 23 rd February.

Please check HERE for all the details, plus testimonials and more.

The launch will take place at FireWorks Gallery one of Brisbane's best known art galleries. Check out the gallery's history HERE I am very grateful to the Director, Michael Eather, for allowing me to hold the launch and mini exhibiton at FireWorks.

The thirty original paintings inside For Everyone  will be exhibited from the 22 - 25 February at FireWorks Gallery. The paintings have not been exhibited before.

*The e-magazine The Culture Concept has written a short piece about the launch.

For Everyone
The thirty paintings inside For Everyone are each accompanied by some short, and sometimes, poetic prose which is neither didactic nor descriptive. The prose and paintings stir your inner child/essence so that the book becomes all about you, and the conversations you have with yourself and others. Whilst the paintings were initially inspired by observations of my children, particularly as they entered the educational system, over the years I have realised that they are more about the inner child/essence which lives within us all, influencing how we react to events in our lives, how we love and hate, how we cope with success and failure...and so on.

INSIDE FOR EVERYONE
I have uploaded some of the paintings inside For Everyone. The paintings were created in 1997 when my children were very little. In fact, I was pregnant with my third child when I painted this series. She is a bit put out that she's not in one particular image, the one just below called Dare to Be. This painting depicts a family of four, Mum, Dad, and two children with a crowd of eyes staring at them. Yes, it is a painting of me, my then husband and our two children. I have tried to portray how we felt when we were lobbying for a differentiated educational program for our eldest child. We lived in a small country town and the issue became a point of discussion around the community!

Yet, whilst this painting was inspired by a particular series of events it actually, I believe, demonstrates how we all might feel when we step outside the norm. We feel all eyes are on us, we temper our behaviour not to be too noticeable, we gird ourselves to pursue what we think is right...and so on. We can feel anxious, fearful, questioning ourselves and others, angry, disappointed, excited, proud... These kinds of feelings wax and wane as we grow older. But as we get older we become gamer and braver. But, do we?

Dare To Be  Gouache on paper 28 x 37.6

Asleep Gouache on paper 28 x 37.6 cm

This is the prose I wrote for Asleep:

Why did the slow tortoise and the fast hare race each other?
Steady wins the race, so the moral goes.

But, do mismatched races benefit anyone?



Which One? Gouache on paper 37.6 x 28 cm

The initial inspiration for Which One? came from witnessing how my children changed their behaviour according to environments eg: home, educational etc. I watched as they conformed [or not] to perceived expectations from teachers and friends. How they negotiated the complexity of playground dynamics, performance expectations from teachers, parents, friends etc. Absolutely fascinating and I am sure very normal. Yet, sometimes I wondered if one particular child was really just too attuned to other's expectations and approval or disapproval!

As time passed and I re-looked at the paintings in this series, I realised that paintings such as Which One? 'speak' to all of those who are vulnerable toseeking approval and avoiding disapproval, often becoming angry with oneself when behaviours and decisions are based on everything but one's own desires and dreams. Ultimately the question asked is 'Who am I?'

This is the prose accompanying Which One? in For Everyone:

Who are you?
Self perceptions can morph wildly
from one situation to another,
especially if the approval of others is the master.

When you ponder the other paintings in this post, and in For Everyone, you will see how they all relate. Indeed, the painting below Disappearance takes on interesting connotations when considered with Which One? Do people 'disappear' as they morph to expectations or do they need to disappear to find themselves again? Think about Which One? in relation to Who Pulls The Strings?

Inner Child Gouache on paper 47.6 x 28 cm


Disappearance Gouache on paper 37.6 x 28 cm

There are many conversations you can have with yourself about Disappearance.


Let Them Fly Gouache on paper 37.6 x 28 cm

Who Pulls The Strings? Gouache on paper 37.6 x 28 cm

I'd like to think that people, who buy For Everyone will return to it time and time again, just to ponder and to let their imaginations 'go'. But, there are many possible scenarios where the book can be used to spark conversation and creativity. A primary school teacher has told me she will be using For Everyone as a stimulus for her gifted and talented creative writing class. I young consellor has seen possibilities where the book could be used as a stimulus for conversations with clients/patients, to draw out those secrets we hold within our psyches, within the inner child. I can see For Everyone being a tool to stimulate conversations with the elderly, where memories of their early lives may be stirred, revealing those details that are often missed in simply recalling facts about events.

PRICES
The paintings will be exhibited from 22 - 25 February at FireWorks Gallery. They will be on display for the actual book launch on the 23rd. Details HERE

All, but one, will be exhibited unframed. I have framed the painting which is on the front cover of For Everyone so people can get an idea of what the paintings might look like when framed. The unframed price is $700 AUD and framed $920 AUD

My children have picked out one painting each to keep.



Thursday, February 09, 2012

CLOSE AND FAR DISTANCE

                                                              Oil on linen 80 x 150 cm

I am in a quandary. I have painted this new work above with general ideas of an 'everything landscape' in mind. Yet, I don't know what to call it. Maybe, by the end of writing this post a title will have come to me.

I was wanting to visually capture a sense of vastness at the same time as revealing the minutiae that etches character, nuance and intimacy into the landscape. I wanted the landscape to be ambiguous with regards to exact place and space, yet recognisable as landscape, yes an Australian one, but also a universal one. I hoped that viewers would 'read' the painting in a variety of ways, at one instance seeing for example, land and sea, at another instance land and sky, or maybe fire and water, or perhaps at a micro level seeing a cross section of a drop of water and a grain of sand. Maybe seeing 'everything' and every perspective at once...

This landscape took me back to my childhood growing up on the treeless Pirriunuan Plain, just outside Dalby on the Darling Downs, Queensland. Looking eastwards, the majestic Bunya Moutains cut a startling silhouette against endless skies. Looking westwards the flat horizon shimmered with watery mirages in summer, and in winter the crisp coldness evaporated mirages to almost reveal the curvature of the Earth. Within this vast expanse I could be propelled from a wonder of endless space to a curiosity of micro intimacies. This experience of close and far distance has inspired me over many years. These are the 'landscape' elements I try to visually describe.

Regular readers will know of my interest in perspective, literal and metaphoric. I have written about it numerous times. In an increasingly globalised world in which we live locally, it is imperative that we develop skills in seeing multiple perspectives...even simultaneously. The dance between the macro and micro involves a myriad of, what could be called, perspectival steps... like a tango where there are flamboyantly expressed moves and tantalisingly intimate gestures, or like a symphony where music's fulsome largess can seem beyond distance and individual notes can catapult the listener to places where seductive secrets stir.

So back to the painting above. Two of my much loved transcultural-religious trees-of-life create the landscape elements, both broadly speaking as well as in detail. The Australian landscape, particularly where I grew up, constantly changes. As seasons pass, sorghum crops swathe the landscape in rusty red, wheat fields wash it with naples yellow, sunflowers make it sing with a sunshine yellow, new seedlings whisper a soft green hue. When the soil is fallow it reveals a rich and fertile blackness. The sky can be crystal blue, sometimes greeted by fluffy white clouds, and at other times dense grey ones. At night the darkness is still, only interrupted by the sparkle of the Milky Way and the moon in its various phases. I remember when my Father, like most farmers at the time, used to burn the stubble after harvesting was completed. This was done under controlled conditions and prior to research showing that ploughing the stubble back into the soil was a better method.  The fires were outstanding, furious and shortlived. The colours were rich and thick. In drought the land is bare and naked, after rain it sings with new colours.

Intimate details such as cracked dry soil, scattered seeds, abundant mushrooms after rain, animal droppings, snake trails, discovering chook eggs in the bamboo, dropped feathers, rain drops on leaves, puddles, small insects [sometimes in plague proportions!], wildflowers and so on, are the warp and weft creating the tapestry of vastness. They are all there in the landscape above...trust me!

Regular readers might ask about my concerns for the land, and the landscape, with regards to the burgeoning Coal Seam Gas industry and the growth in open cut mining. Indeed, these activities disrupt the landscape externally and internally, visually and vibrationally. The quiet stillness of the black of night, in parts of Australia, is now silenced with the constant and persistent noise of gas wells. The landscape is visually punctuated with these same wells and underground they bore into depths where gas extraction potentially can change aquifer dynamics and soil profiles. As regular readers know, my concerns have been expressed many time before on this BLOG.

Most Australians know their landscape is affected by the volatility inherent in nature's extremes....bush fires, floods, droughts, cyclones ravage the land. Indeed, in Western Queensland and Northern New South Wales, floods are currently wrecking homes, businesses, crops and infrastructure. The town of St. George is having its third flood within two years and the town has been evacuated. Whilst the water is currently destructive, the long term benefits are enormous. The soil's profile is now replete with moisture, dams and rivers are full. Three to four years ago the soil was starved of moisture, dams were low, rivers in danger.

I think I will call this painting 'Close and Far Distance'

SELECTED PERSPECTIVE AND DISTANCE POSTS

CLOSE DISTANCE
PERSPECTIVE-Distance
INTO THE SYMPHONY
HOPE IN THE DISTANCE
NOTIONS OF PERSPECTIVE
THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING
UNTETHERING LANDSCAPE


 *****************************************************************************

FOR EVERYONE: WORDS AND PAINTINGS UPDATE
Two weeks today until my BOOK LAUNCH!

Just a reminder that my book launch for 'For Everyone: Words and Paintings' is Thursday 23 February! Click HERE for more details.

TESTIMONIALS

Not only is Kathryn a deeply talented, original and inspiring artist, she has a gift for wordsmithing as well! Utilizing the raw power of her art, ‘For Everyone’ is a masterful insight into the very essence of who we truly are, our complexities, our simplicities and who we are meant to be. Dr George Blair-West, Author of The Way of the Quest

In Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox’s book, 'For Everyone: Words and Paintings', the combination of words and images is a gift to the senses. I highly recommend it. Felix Calvino, Author of A Hatful of Cherries

For Everyone is absolutely beautiful and as I read the prose, and looked at the paintings, it was like going on a personal journey of my life. It touched on fond memories of my childhood and reinforced my beliefs in being an individual. As a teacher I know this book could be used in so many ways. In 2011 I organised and ran the Gifted and Talented Program in Writing at my school. Many students in my class published their poetry and stories in an Australian wide writing competition. I am continuing in this position in 2012 and will incorporate this unique book to help my students develop their ideas and be more expressive. The paintings and phrases in For Everyone are great conversation starters. They will also inspire and encourage students to be brave enough to share and express their thoughts and individuality. This book is a fabulous resource for educating and inspiring young people to share the beauty from within! Lou Walsh: Primary School Teacher
So, until next time,
Cheers,
Kathryn
www.kathrynbrimblecombe-fox.com