SCAP winner Miles Hall with Caloundra Regional Gallery Director, John Waldron following the announcement of the $15,000 prize for Pine Lime (Splice).

BRISBANE-BASED artist, Miles Hall is the winner of the fifth annual Sunshine Coast Art Prize. Miles is the son of Maleny residents Les and Rae Hall. Miles has won a $15,000 cash prize and four weeks workshop residency at Arley Farm in Maleny. The winning painting is an abstract called Splice (Pine Lime).

This year’s judge, well-known art critic and weekly columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald, John McDonald commented on the distinguished contribution SCAP was making to the national art calendar.

Highly Commended was Catherine O’Donnell’s Civic Centre. Catherine is from Sydney.

“Australia has a fatal attraction to art prizes, from the Archibald to the local fete”, said John at the Caloundra Regional Gallery. “By avoiding an obvious theme such as portraiture or still life, the prize leaves the door open to many different styles and genres in a range of media.”

While announcing the winner at the Caloundra Regional Gallery on August 26, John said, “Splice (Pine Lime), is essentially an abstract picture that generates a range of pictorial tensions. We see the work at first as a kind of landscape, depicting tangled undergrowth or a reflection in water. The severe green line across the bottom of the work creates a jarring contrast, bringing us back to the formal issues of line versus plane, depth as opposed to flatness. It’s an edgy, speculative affair that never aspires to perfection, but that’s part of the appeal.”

Commended was Vicki Hersi’s abstract painting, Still Life Objects.

Catherine O’Donnell’s Civic Centre was given the highly commended award.

John McDonald commented that, “Few will fail to be impressed by the artist’s painstaking mastery of charcoal, and her careful delineation of a piece of urban geometry that would make even Jeffrey Smart think twice,” said Mr McDonald.

The 2010 SCAP exhibition at the Caloundra Regional Gallery showcases the work of all 40 finalists. It is open until 3 October.

All works are for sale and entry to the gallery is free. If you would like to place your vote for the People’s Choice award you can do so either online at www.scap.org.au or at the gallery.

Cheryle Penrose demonstrating polymer clay & bead making techniques at her jewellery store at Artists on the Green, Montville.

MONTVILLE-BASED creative group, Arts Connect Inc. have received Council approval to stage monthly art events on the Montville Village Green. Having been trialled over the last year Artists on the Green will now be held on the second Saturday of each month from 8.30 am to 3pm. A diverse range of local artists will demonstrate and sell their work under colourful canopies in the heart of Montville.

Visitors will find potters, painters, jewellers, sculptors happy to demonstrate and talk about their work. Joined by doll makers, textile artists, illustrators, leather workers and even a scrimshaw worker, an interesting variety of genuine local art can be found at Artists on the Green.

The Village Green is part of the Montville Heritage Precinct found at the top of town alongside St Mary’s Church and the Village Hall.

The same Saturday each month a local produce market is run in the Village Hall where visitors can purchase farm fresh food, locally made breads and cheeses, condiments, plants and lots more. As a fundraiser to support the Montville Hall and Sports Ground residents serve yummy pancakes and Montville coffee from 7.30am and organic BBQ sausages for lunch.

The Montville Chamber of Commerce has co-ordinated a program of buskers each Saturday bringing together a wonderful show of cooperation within the Village.
All enquiries to president@artsconnectinc.com.au

Local boys create butterflies to complement the Mary Cairncross Birdwing Butterfly Walk

Art4place is an exciting new community-based arts enterprise that wants to see more art in public places on the Hinterland. The concept not only brightens our built environment but helps give people a sense of belonging to the community.

Art4place is working with artists, community groups, businesses and all levels of government to highlight art that is already in public places and to stimulate the creation of more public art on our streets.

The recent Festival of the Walks gave the group the opportunity to showcase their aims when the Hinterland Business Centre and Hinterland Tourism created a walking art trail around Maleny.

A giant Birdwing Butterfly creates a good impression

The group also collaborated with Arts Connect to set up arts activities at Mary Cairncross Park and Kondallilla Falls during the Festival. They also helped organise the street party and launch of the Montville art and heritage trail at Russell Family Park in Montville.
Some of the key public art installations in Maleny include Janna Pameijer’s herd of cows beside the Obi Obi bridge, The Obi Pathway Kirsten Cash’s salute to the Obi Obi creek’s lush, rich habitats and diversity, Craig Medson and Fiona McCarron’s Community Centre Pavement featuring Australian fauna icons of platypus, echidna and giant barred frog, and A Sense of Place – six panels and words outside the Hinterland Business Centre  encapsulating the relationship of the Range community to the land.

If you are interested in helping create new placemaking art contact: www.art4place.blogspot.com or Ph: 5499 9911.

Bus Stop 21 Oil

ONE OF THE advantages of growth is being able to appreciate different aspects of a subject and for an artist, life experience is invaluable. This is apparent in the works
of Kevin Oxley who has the enviable combination of honed artistic abilities, plenty to express and a genuinely different way of looking at the world. A recent move to a larger studio, heightened his awareness of his own technical and creative progression, as various artworks resurfaced. This has led to a delightful collection of works to be featured at ‘Art on Cairncross’, which Oxley has aptly titled “Ways of Seeing”.

“I hope that those who have enjoyed my highly successful exhibitions along various themes over the past few years, will enjoy seeing where a lot of those ideas and methods

Flower Study - Oil on Terylene

came from”, says Oxley.

The works encompass glorious oils and cross-hatched pencil drawings alongside fine watercolours and etchings. The subjects range from traditional landscapes expertly capturing the light to some still available works from the Quixote series, all of which
command respect and consideration. Oxley has seen many sides of life from a working class childhood on the Hay Plains through to his twenties, when having earned his living with many different jobs, he was painting and drawing as much as possible and knew he wanted to be an artist.

He applied for a visual arts course at the East Sydney Technical College, presented a

Hill Form, Blackall Range - coloured pencil

portfolio and was amazed when the interviewer essentially told him that he had already
accomplished all that the course could teach him. His ‘selfdirected’ learning continues to this day and in this collection the marvellous results will speak for themselves.

“Ways of Seeing” will be on display at ‘Art on Cairncross’, Cairncross Corner, Maleny from September 11th – 26th. The gallery is open 10 am to 5 pm, Tuesday through Sunday and more information can be found at www.artoncairncross.com.au

KEN WENZEL was born in Brisbane in September 1930. He has called Maleny home for well over thirty years and has been a major exhibitor at the Montville Art Gallery for nearly as long.

“They’ll have to carry me away in a box,” Ken told us. “I find constant inspiration from the magnificent scenery surrounding my home and studio on the crest of the Conondale Range, but I also enjoy visiting the many magnificent beaches here on the Sunshine Coast. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction to transfer onto canvas a scene I have experienced and enjoyed.”

“No other artists capture Jacaranda and Poinciana trees quite like Ken,” said Lisa Powell, long time manager of the Montville Art Gallery.

“His realist paintings of the Glasshouse Mountains are exceptional and extremely popular with interstate and overseas visitors,” Lisa added.

Ken has had numerous battles with illness but always manages to bounce back. He is not permitted to fly so he travels extensively by car in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia.

“I relish the challenge of capturing the colours after a long hot summer, or the magic hues of spring, as ‘Salvation Jane’ covers the hillsides.”

In the year 2000, Ken self published a beautiful coffee table book, “The Many Facets of artist – Kenneth Wenzel”

“I felt I wanted to share my life,” Ken told us. “I did most of the writing on the beach and gradually built up the story in much the same way as I develop a painting.”

“Ken’s book has 44 colour plates of his favourite paintings showing him not only as a multi-talented artist but as an extremely competent photographer as well,” said gallery owner, Tony Page. “We are thrilled that he has agreed to be our feature artist in September to coincide with his eightieth birthday. Ken will be at the gallery on Sunday, September 12 to sign copies of his book and to chat to customers about his paintings.”

Open daily from 10am to 5pm, the Montville Art Gallery is located at 138 Main Street, Montville, opposite the Village Green.

Ken’s paintings will also be featured under “Exhibitions” on the gallery’s website: www.montvilleartgallery.com.au from September 1.

Kevin says, “my entry continues to be about the healing power of art. The warrior within is drawn on to battle against the odds”.

Kevin has fought successfully over the past five years against pancreatic cancer. He continues to work despite ongoing treatment.

The 46 finalists will go on tour throughout NSW and Queensland from December through to March. The winner will be announced in Grafton on Friday October 29.

Linocut Workshop with Sonja Georgeson (above) onSaturday and Sunday Septmber 4-5.

Learn the basics of linocut – an easy and highly satisfyingform of printmaking, and produce your own original prints.Suitable for beginners.

$280 – includes all materials and morning and afternoonteas and lunches.

A Weekend of Life Drawing with Lynn Cran on Saturdayand Sunday September 25-26.

Over 2 days participants have the opportunity toimmerse themselves in the visual arts’ most enduringpractice, drawing of the human figure. These classes aredesigned to nurture the artist in a friendly, supportiveenvironment. They are suitable for those wanting to trytheir hand for the first time and to anyone wishing toenhance their drafting skills.

$350 – includes model hire, morning and afternoon teasand lunches.

Exploring Acrylics with Gary Myers on Saturday andSunday October 2-3.

This workshop will either introduce you to acrylics oropen up to you further possibilities with them. We willcover some basics of acrylic painting working together as agroup but tackling tasks in your own creative and individualstyles.

$350 (incl GST)
Ph: 5499 9801. E: admin@malenyartsretreat.com.au

“There will be a CD at the gallery with the music that the paintings are inspired by”, says Rosemary, “and I am hoping that the viewers can connect the painting to the music. There will also be a number at each painting that will refer to the right track on the CD.”

Rosemary Almberg was born and art trained in the UK. She married a Swede and settled in Sweden where her abstract art developed. She later settled on Magnetic Island to join her children and exhibited widely in Queensland.

Rosemary moved on from Magnetic Island to Maleny in 2002, where she has won two awards at the “Maleny Art Awards and Exhibition”, 2004 and in 2008. She has exhibited at the Caloundra Regional Gallery, where she had an earlier, Music in Paint show.

Main Street Gallery, 167 Main St. Montville, QLD 4560.
Phone: 07 5478 5050 – www.mainstreetgallery.com.au
Arms Take Your Last Embrace 1996

Ever the student of old and new ceramic skills, Johanna has just returned from a four week workshop at China’s Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute. She was awarded a rare study grant to China’s premier university for ceramics, to study the ancient technique of overglaze enamelling. She has returned enthused with ideas that will take her in new creative directions, and she spoke to the Hinterland Times about her trip.

Jingdezhen is ceramic city with decorated porcelain lamp-posts

Johanna’s constant search for new sources of inspiration has led her to study ceramic techniques throughout the world. These studies have taken her to Delft, Royal Copenhagen and Stoke-on-Trent, and to participate in workshops at Meissen and Royal Monaco. A prestigious Churchill Fellowship took her to Europe in 2001 to study lustre glazes.

Johanna’s ceramic vessels combine an eye for modern design with a timeless classical quality of form and visual lustre. It is no surprise that one of Johanna’s vessels was presented to Her Majesty the Queen during her 2000 royal tour and why, in 2004, a magnificent work entitled Rebirth featuring a butterfly was presented by the Governor-General of Australia as his personal wedding gift to Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark and Mary Donaldson.

Jingdezhen City, in the north-east of Jiangxi Province is known as China’s Porcelain Capital. Johanna was housed in the international section of the university and, while facilities were basic, she could at least switch on her laptop and Skype her family in Australia.

The long communal kiln is a feature of ancient Chinese ceramic tradition

This town of 1.5 million people has produced pottery for 1700 years, and its history can be seen everywhere in the city. Even the traffic lights and the lamp-posts are made from porcelain, says Johanna. They have weekly antique ceramics markets in the city and no ceramic piece is wasted. One amusing example is the creation of little walls, made up of lots of old rejected ceramic pieces, as a parody of the Great Wall.

As we all know there are fundamental changes going on in China, no more so than in ceramic arts. The Chinese ceramic tradition is for the firing of work in huge communal kilns. No-one has ownership of individual pieces – one person throws the clay, another shapes a pot, another glazes, another fires and another paints designs.

It all comes together at the communal kiln but no single person owns or signs the work. Even the renowned porcelain works of the imperial Ming and Tang dynasties were made in this communal way. That situation is changing says Johanna with new graduates eager to set up their own studios and launch careers as individual artists where they see both fame and fortune.

Johanna stands beside a small wall that is a wonderful mix of ceramic odds and ends.

“What’s still impressive are the high levels of skill of those involved in ceramics,” says Johanna. “So the porcelain painters are extremely skilled, the carvers are skilled, the glazers are skilled. But when you put them altogether and get one person to complete the whole work, you don’t get the same level of skill. It’s changing but it will take time.”

Johanna went to Jingdezhen to learn the traditional Chinese techniques of overglaze enamelling-decorating or painting over the top of the fired glaze. The work is then refired at lower temperatures to produce beautifully controlled designs in rich enamel colours.

Johanna was taught by a professor, following the traditions of tracing ancient motifs, mixing colours and how to hold a paint brush, Chinese-style.

a young Chinese potter uses the unusual standing posture to throw a pot

“I’m not very good with a paint brush,” says Johanna with a smile. “So I had to get used to holding a brush with a steady hand so that it holds the volume of paint within it.

“At the moment my decorative surfaces are limited to using lustre and gold, sand-blasting, and raised enamel dotting. I wanted to get back to the grass roots Chinese ceramicists, and use the brush in a painterly way. I have now been able to teach myself how to apply broad areas of overglaze enamel colour.

Johanna DeMaine’s painstaking attention to technique and design tradition reflects her first career as a high school teacher in languages, economics and geography. Not only has she brought back from China several enamels, some of the oils and many different brushes, but she is researching the techniques she has been shown.

“The Chinese are very secretive about the techniques they are prepared to give away,” she says with a smile. “I was told things that I haven’t seen in print. Now I am researching some ancient Chinese texts to see if what I have been shown matches up with the theory.”

We can expect, in the future, some exciting new ceramic art directions from Johanna DeMaine who always returns to the inspiration of the Sunshine Coast hinterland and the Glasshouse Mountains. Her latest exhibition is called, All that is Sublime and is at Art on Cairncross, Cairncross Corner, Maleny from August 7-29.

MCU CEO Greg Stevens with Philippa Elvy and her painting Backyard Conversation - winner of best overall exhibit in the Zonta Woman In Art Competition.

MCU WERE the major sponsor of the annual Zonta Club of Blackall Range Women In Art Exhibition. This three day event showcased the creative talents of women of all ages from the local area. CEO Greg Stevens said MCU were delighted to support the Woman In Art Exhibition as the major sponsor for another three years.

The best overall exhibit went to Philippa Elvy’s painting “Backyard Conversation”.

Judge Bree Richards commented: “I thought this work was really interesting, with its wacky, warped depiction of a group of blokes having a natter. It looks like something you might see reflected back at you in one of those zany circus mirrors.

Greg Stevens was so intrigued with Phillipa’s entry – which she described as her husband having a natter with friends in the backyard – that Greg bought the painting.

(Winner of the WIA raffle was Norma Kingston)