Elisabeth Cummings

Australian artist Elisabeth Cummings’ career is going well and her painting is getting more attention.

“I’m not mad about it in lots of ways,” she said. “I like anonymity.”

After years of what Cummings describes as “quietly working away” practicing her art and teaching, the painter and printmaker has had in the past six months had a show in Hong Kong, plus two highly successful exhibitions in Sydney.

“In the last 20 years I think I’ve grown more confident,” she told the ABC.

Her landscapes and interiors are on show at the Manly Art Gallery alongside Lloyd Rees and Brett Whitely.

The only surprising thing about it is that she is 81 years old.

Article by Phillipa McDonald: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-31/artist-elisabeth-cummings-enjoys-renewed-success/7126462

James McArdle, camera obscura

PLACE, FACE & CYBERSPACE

After Abelardo Morell, another contemporary artist who actively uses the Camera Obscura as a tool is James McArdle. James is Associate Professor in the Image: Photography/Graphics at Deakin University.

His recent series ‘Evanescent’ is a series of pictures made with a lens and a black t-shirt forming a makeshift Camera Obscura, in which he projects an image of the tree canopy above down onto the micro-world of the forest floor. The results recapture the child-like joy to be had in the experience of optical devices, confusing ordinary spatial relations so that the macro and the micro become confused and conflated: ‘the world in a grain of sand’ to quote William Blake.

“In the  steep, trackless locations in which I am making these images, my means are necessarily … makeshift; my camera and lens able to be carried in a backpack. The resultant project is not systematic but intuitive…

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John Wolseley interview

An interview with John Wolseley, including a demonstration of his drawing-with-a-dead-pelican technique…

John Wolseley at NGV

John Wolseley‘s exhibition ‘Heartlands and Headwaters’ at the NGV Australia is not be missed by anyone interested in drawing, painting or Australian art generally.

“The different geographical features and unique plant and animal forms of these wetlands are depicted in the finely worked drawing and rich watercolour washes that characterise Wolseley’s work. Many also combine collage elements and markings made ‘in collaboration’ with the natural environment. Through this way of working, which includes burying works and drawing with carbonized wood found in the bush, the artist subverts traditional approaches to the depiction of landscape. These works celebrate the beauty of the Australian wilderness and encourage an understanding of the significance and environmental fragility of these remote and little-known sites.”

Exhibition link: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/john-wolseley/