Zig Zag Cultural Centre

Exhibition: Everyday is Different

Dates: 3^rd September – 18^th September 2022

Photograph: John Eden in his studio
📸 Zig Zag Gallery

Exhibition: Art is History

Dates: 21st July - 7th August 2022 | Venue: Zig Zag Gallery, Kalamunda

When did this series of works begin?
I was drawing strange places I found exploring the bush on my mountain bike and my research led me to the Kalamunda History Village and Pickering Brook Heritage Group. It wasn’t long before I joined them to pick their brains. My role photographing their heritage sites gave me new subject matter to paint and draw.

Where did you grow up and how has this influenced your art practice?
I grew up in the north west of England. My father was an art teacher and bloody amazing painter. He painted in the modernist style, heavily influenced by Cezanne, Picasso and Matisse. I just followed in his footsteps, I guess.

What draws you to these places long-forgotten?
Different things, but mainly the narrative behind the place or object. My imagination is sparked. With the tree stumps we are looking at very old, even pre-European organic matter. What they have witnessed so to speak fascinates me as much as the object itself. I like that they appear like I have invented them, abstracted them from my imagination, but I haven’t. Each is a uniquely true thing.

Can you share a story about your experience at one of these historical landmarks/sites?
There’s not much of Barton’s Mill Prison left to see but written in the concrete of a low wall under the branches of a low-lying fig is the words PAUL MULE ’87. The prison closed in 1989. Paul Mule is in prison now. He was the armourer for the Coffin Cheaters. Clearly his stint at Barton’s did not deter him from a life of crime.

What role do you think art and artists have in wider society?
We see the world more clearly than anyone, we are the conscience and the future of this planet. We have original ideas. Our role is to wake up society to itself.

What is the role of place, connection and identity in your work?
This is a tricky one. I don’t feel I belong in this country. Australia is not my home, not in the way it’s the home of First Nations people. However, I have been here nearly 25 years now and the hills are a place I know better than anywhere I’ve experienced in my life. My identity is wrapped up in my movements through this landscape and the things I get up to in it. It took me a long time to realise the most important ingredient was being overlooked. My painting picked up markedly with this scary pandemic. It made me stop procrastinating and what you see is the result of my need to make things. This is me.

Photograph: George Hayward with a few of his artworks
📸 Zig Zag Gallery

Exhibition: Unspoken

Dates: 17th June - 3rd July 2022 | Venue: Zig Zag Gallery, Kalamunda

Photograph: Fern Bhuttoo in her studio
📸 Zig Zag Gallery

Exhibition: Women Water Seeds

Dates: 28th May - 12th June 2022 | Venue: Zig Zag Gallery, Kalamunda

How would you describe yourself as an artist?
I’ve always loved art. It’s a joy to learn about artists, to see artist’s views of the world, and to learn techniques. I taught myself to draw and paint, organising my own exhibitions over Ten years, and then attended art school in Newcastle NSW between 2012 – 2015, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Art and the Work Integrated Learning Award. It is both terrifying and exciting to exhibit my artwork, and deeply rewarding when people respond in a positive way. I’ve been exhibiting for 25 years now. My art practice led me into teaching art. Art is important for my mental wellbeing. I find art deeply therapeutic.

Image: Fineart G. Lorenz, Aquarius meeting, 2021, Oil on Canvas, 101 x 76cm.

Exhibition: 100% Semi SuR ReaL

Dates: 4 - 27 March 2022 | Venue: Zig Zag Gallery, Kalamunda

How would you describe yourself as an artist?
I can say for myself that I was born as an artist. Furthermore, in 1996 I was officially recognised by the Austrian Ministry for Education & Art as awarded “Freelance Active Visual Painter”.

Can you tell me more about how your personal history has shaped your art practice?
I started drawing and painting as a teenager. 
I learned the profession of technical draftsman, I also completed an apprenticeship as a product constructor and designer. During this time I was already internationally successful with my paintings.
In the mid-1980s I was invited by Prof. Arik Brauer to his masterclass at the “Academy of Fine Arts” in Vienna. At the age of 29 (1987) I decided to become a “freelance artist”.

What drew you to Surrealism?
The unique works of Salvador Dali. If you deal with surrealism – and its representatives – it was a fascination for me to dive into this dream world.

How has your practice changed over time?
Not very much, actually. Of course you get better technically over the decades. 
I was never 100% a surrealist, which is also reflected in the title of my exhibition… “Semi” SuR ReaL. I am more of a representative of the symbolistic art style or of the “Vienna Fantastic Realism”.

What motivates you to create?
I live to paint – and paint to survive

What is your process for creating these paintings?
A good idea, inspiration and my creativity.
Most of the time the title of the picture is already born and so I can read into the matter. Another important point for me id dealing with polarities. I look at both ideas and recognise the complexity, connections but also the humour.

What role do you think art and artists have in wider society?
An enormous importance. They are the ones which hold high encouragement of imagination - but also those who had to cross boundaries in order to find new possibilities of expression and to realize them. I am convinced that humanity would not have come this far in its evolution – without artists.

Photograph: (from left) Ellis Pearson sitting in front of his painting 'Dancing Water' | Ellis Pearson sitting in his studio. 
📸 Zig Zag Gallery

Exhibition: Crooked Water

Dates: 12th - 27th February 2022 | Venue: Zig Zag Gallery, Kalamunda

How my personal history has shaped my art practice:
The biggest influences on my painting practice have been my love of making theatre and making music. Also very important, has been my life-long spiritual practice which may partly be described as 'making the invisible visible'. Music practice has helped me understand that visual art can embody melody, harmony and rhythm. One can 'hear' the different tones in a painting. Just as music can create a particular atmosphere, a painting can do likewise. In a related process, my physical theatre practice has helped me embody movement and gesture in my canvases. I literally 'dance' when I paint, trying to make marks that are spontaneous and have that 'nameless' quality.

Regarding my creative art practice as a spiritual journey, I have come to value my painting, for example, as a way to experience qualities such as stillness in the midst of movement, peace in the midst of a busy world, and the development of the capacity to see more deeply.

The meaning behind the title "Crooked Water".
Poetry may be described as 'painting with words". Usually one would refer to a 'crooked' politician, or a crooked picture on the wall. For me, linking two unlikely words such as 'crooked' and 'water', paints an intriguing and imaginative and perhaps, playful, picture. More directly, the water tank that appears in many of my paintings is an old, rusty, and decidedly crooked metal object that sits so serenely in its field in Denmark. And the two rivers that are the subjects of other paintings - the Swan and Denmark rivers are so wonderfully 'crooked' in their endless twisting and turning.

Where I find my inspiration:
Nature! The incredible play of creatures, sky, air, trees, water, mountains, earth and earthworms. I feel that we as human two-legged creatures, are more interesting when we take a break from identifying ourselves as 'humanity' with it's seemingly unending anxiety, competitiveness and restlessness, and identify more with our 'creaturely' selves. With a sense of wonder, we can experience our indigenous nature. I have found that this a helped me become more aware of the beauty in the clouds, in the light from the sun, the day changing to night, the breeze that moves the trees.