Remembering uKhahlamba

Holidays are great but often it is really hard to get back into a working routine once back home. Facing a large blank canvas is also something many artists find challenging and setting up a painting routine is hard. A warm up drawing is a useful way to break the impasse. 

Mountain range - graphite 

This year, though, starting a new painting was so much easier. I received much inspiration during my short trip to the mountains of the Southern Drakensberg while I was on holiday. I have one new painting well on the way and ideas for a few others. I love painting and once I get into the groove after a break I can’t understand why I struggle to start painting.

Here’s a cropped WIP section - just the very top of the canvas Remembering uKhahlamba. In Zulu, uKhahlamba means the Barrier of up-pointed spears. The Afrikaans settlers called the mountain range Drakensberg - the mountains of the dragon. This vast escarpment stretches for some 1000 kilometres from the Eastern Cape as far as Limpopo Province in the North. 

cARTwheel Collaborative exhibits at Percolator Gallery, Paddington, Brisbane

Four artists, members of cARTwheel Collaborative Janine Whitling, Giovanna Scott, Vicki Donaldson and I will be exhibiting at Percolator Gallery in Paddington from Wednesday 11th November to Sunday 15th November 2015.

As always, there will be a wide variety of exciting work on display. It's a good time to find some wonderful gifts for Christmas. 

The work I will be showing will be a selection of recent paintings - some large and medium-sized landscape paintings with the themes of ponds, reflections and trees.

In addition there will be some small framed watercolours that will make ideal gifts. After working in oils for most of this last year, I'm enjoying painting these still life subjects in watercolour and loving the smaller, more intimate format.

We will hang the exhibition on Tuesday 10th so  the exhibition will be open from Wednesday.
It will run until Sunday 15th November. Opening hours are 10.00am - 6.00pm Wednesday to Friday; 9.00am - 4.00pm Saturday and Sunday.

If you would like to chat to me about the exhibition I will be in the gallery for most of the day on Wednesday 11th November. 

We'd love you to join us on Friday 13th at 6.00pm for drinks and nibbles. 

In the meantime, and keeping it real, here's what my studio looks like today! 

Paintings at Nundah Village Art Exhibition

This weekend it's the annual Nundah Village Art exhibition. I have four paintings that will be exhibited. The artwork can be viewed on Saturday 12th and Sunday 13th September, from 10.00 am to 3.00 pm both days.

Exhibitors can enter work in various categories: Landscape, Contemporary, Portraiture and Still Life, as well as a section for sculpture. I have paintings in four categories, so each work is quite different. 

Low Tide - Currumbin Beach is of a particular place and time. It recalls a bright winter day - a cold wind - a very low tide and white light reflecting off the sea. The human element, the little girl is there, but dwarfed by the vast stretch of beach - she's the only one to brave the chilly wind.

If you would like to see the process of this painting, I have complied a Flipagram here.

Low Tide - Currumbin Beach - oil on canvas ©2015 Carol Lee Beckx

Strata has a very different feel. I've been working on this painting for quite a while. It's the kind of painting that has to take time; like the way the geology of the earth is built up layer upon layer over time. Certainly this is not a motif that can be rushed. I enjoyed the change of pace with this painting, using gentle muted colours and abstract shapes, hinting at the layers of the earth.

Strata oil on canvas ©2015 Carol Lee Beckx

My entry for the Portraiture section is Reflection. It's a portrait of my Great Niece, reflected in a nearby window - sitting quietly on some boxes - totally absorbed in her own thoughts. 

Reflection - oil on linen ©2015 Carol Lee Beckx

The last painting is Love Dahlia -  watercolour on paper, my favourite pink makes an appearance here.  

Love Dahlia - watercolour on paper - framed ©2015 Carol Lee Beckx

When I look at these four paintings together I realise that my star sign, Gemini, is evident here - a different person seems to have been involved with each one...

Finding Inspiration

When I was writing the previous post about the Lethbridge 10,000 and the current theme of my paintings, I realised something. I realised that somehow, surreptitiously, I had become a landscape painter.

I hadn't been in Australia for very long, maybe six or eight months, when I drove up the coast to Mooloolaba to have a look. Previously, rocks had featured in a number of paintings and I wanted to find something here in Australia to kick start a new series. The day seemed fine when I set off but when I arrived it was cloudy and gloomy. I took a lot of photos of the pounding sea and the rocks. 

Then I wandered into a gallery - The Gallery Beneath and chatted to the owner. I explained to her that I had come up from Brisbane, having recently arrived in Australia, looking for inspiration. 

She turned to me and said: 
"You can't look for inspiration, you've got to feel it here," holding her hand over her heart.

Her words took me by surprise and I almost felt chastised, as though my explorative outing was in some way false. And perhaps it was. The couple of paintings I did from those photographs were not very good at all. I needed to do more than take some photographs to understand a place.

Riverside Trees - oil on linen 

Her words have stayed with me and I've thought about them often - she was absolutely correct. I really needed to be here longer, to live in the country and to let the special places find me rather than the other way around.

When I look at the paintings done over the last few years - Riverside Trees, Windarra Reflections,  and Bunya Riverside and  I see that the landscape has become part of me and that inspiration has found me after all.