Once upon a time I studied at RMIT and majored in Fine Arts. It was an amazing time just to be able concentrate on art and coffee but my first awakening to art was in prep when our teacher Miss Coote got us to scribble some lines on paper and then colour them in as if we were flying over a landscape. In retrospect so many ideas were seeded in this exercise

While I started working in oil and have tried acrylic my favourite medium is tempera and this is the medium I usually use. It can be egg tempera, but at the moment it is a variation of my own recipe.

I normally have a process of stages that I plan to work through, but once the first mark is made and each subsequent one they all work in relationship trying to follow the thread of delight to make something that is ‘itself’. When it becomes ‘itself’ it may not be delightful, but it is true to itself. Continued inspiration comes from responding to implications of marks and colours that are before me.

These days I would call my work abstract drawing on landscape and still life to construct relationship and pattern so my art has moved from observational painting to abstraction; yet there is still a consistency of elements of composition and a sense of light throughout my work. As I go on I think the things that intrigue me, object and ground, shape and line and how they interact, I will continue to shuffle around as I try to find a satisfying set of dance moves with them.

Each Artwork is different so I tend to take the journey approach of keeping going to see what’s on the way.

This new exhibition’, combines Carol’s interest in photography and textiles, with Russell’s shared interest in photography and printing.

Carol has used many new and some old photographs from a range of trips to stimulate the creation of varied textiles. We both have qualifications from the ‘Photography Studies College’ in Melbourne and Carol completed ‘Embroidery for Design’ at Burwood Teachers’ College, now Deakin University. Formal qualifications are a great starting point for artistic growth but continual workshops and practice add to these.

We enjoy the process of photography from identifying suitable subjects, framing and composition of images through to printing all work at home. Similarly Carol’s textiles are often created from hand dyed fabric and many have photographic images printed directly onto fabric.

Collaboration comes in many forms; critiquing each others’ work, juggling images to balance with textiles but specifically this year using the design elements of line, texture and colour to draw some fairly disparate works together.

Our photographic inspiration comes from a variety of sources, travel in Australia and overseas, the natural environment and colours in the environment, as well as participation in camera club competitions and challenges