Tutor feature: Kate Ferguson - Glasson's Art World

Wildlife Art

With the special inspiration that wildlife gives us for painting, this workshop will concentrate on how to bring animals to life, capturing emotion and character. Kate will explore the process of building a painting from the initial concept through to completion using colour, light and good composition to create mood and atmosphere.

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Workshop review: USQ McGregor Winter School 2010

by Vivienne Linnett

Recently I attended another highly enjoyable and productive McGregor Winter School at USQ in Toowoomba. This was my second Winter School, this time choosing to stay off campus, whereas last year, as a first timer, I lived in.

Having become enthusiastic about painting early last year, I set out to find some tuition to fast track my impatience to improve faster than I was progressing alone.  I came across McGregor School's advertisement, which seemed like the perfect arts retreat. A whole week of painting and socialising with fellow artists and no cooking in sight!

I sent in my enrolment as soon as bookings opened early in the year, and waited with much anticipation until early July arrived.

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Workshop focus: Shar Feil-Moorman

Tired of the cold weather in Southern Australia?

How about a trip north to the Sunshine Coast Queensland! While you’re there why not include one of Sculptured Glass Australia’s workshops?

Shar Feil-Moorman

Your Tutor is Shar Feil-Moorman, renowned author and an internationally recognised glass Artist, with numerous installations in private residences, commercial buildings and public art displays.

Glass workshops

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Overseas Art Tour to Italy with Elisabeth Cummings

Acting as an Italian-speaking guide, Elisabeth will re-trace her steps and share precious memories from her personal journeys through Tuscany. For participants this will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-live with Elisabeth Cummings what was a powerfully formative time in her art practice.

On a travelling scholarship in 1958, Elisabeth Cummings spent a year in a villa outside Florence with no other purpose but to paint. She remembers arriving in the region at much the same time as will be the retreat participants – early autumn – with the local produce rich, ripe and ready for harvest. Having a choice of subject matter, Elisabeth painted many of her impressionist-inspired interiors with glimpses of vibrant Tuscan scenes through open windows.

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Workshop review: STURT Winter School 2010

by Cindy Tonkin

I have attended more than eight summer schools and three winter schools at Sturt Craft College in Mittagong. They are always an intense, well-managed experience, where you can get obsessed by a new skill or even perfect an old one, in a friendly environment.

The venue, Frensham Girls School, in Mittagong, is beautiful in summer – sculpted gardens, white buildings and areas of bush as well as manicured gardens. Winter is cold for a Sydney-sider, but often quite sunny. Less than an hour and a half drive from Sydney, it feels like a lifetime away.

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Calendar of Events

New events calendar coming soon. The events calendar will list individual workshops and classes and provide you with much more detail to enable you to make more informed decisions about your art tuition.

View calendar for: August 2010 :: September 2010 :: October 2010

Latest Tips and Tricks

Watch these ceramic making videos from One Tree Hill Pottery in Beechworth, Victoria demonstrate the processes involved in creating beautiful pottery as well as giving you ideas on how to approach your own pottery making.

Serving Platter

• Watch Ric & Judy make and glaze a serving plate using a slab roller, a slump mould and an extruder.

Tantalizing Teapots

• Judy uses an hydraulic extruder as a basis for her non-functional teapot forms.

View videos here >

Chit Chat

It is OH so COLD here in Bathurst! There is a wonderful cosiness about that if you don’t have to be outside…But this year I am finding it a trifle tiresome. Mainly because it is also cloudy. Therefore grey…ho hum.

I have decided that the reason I paint is so that I can connect better with wilderness. And why do I want to do that? Because there is a deep connectedness that I tap into there. So when I respond to that through art I am also connected…perhaps with a life force…and I find peace there as well.

Then comes the work…trying to get what I see, hear and feel onto paper or canvas. Starts off quite well but then somewhere in the middle of the process I reach a point that is quite uncomfortable and sometimes agonising where I must lay the square egg! What colour where? Is the tone OK? Does it need more line? Is it balanced by being unbalanced? IS IT FINISHED???????

Here’s a painting that I haven’t as yet decided whether it is finished…I think the clue might be to sign it, discard it, and get on to the next one.

IF I succeed then I am fairly content for a while ….if not…well there are many starts already started and many others that I could produce very quickly.

Good luck to you all in your process and if you can describe your creative process to me I would be very interested in hearing from you. Just send in your thoughts to teresa@bluebanksia.com.au
Teresa

I was very interested to read about Australia Council's latest research survey, More than bums on seats: Australian Participation in the arts. It's the first major survey of its kind for 10 years and the research showed increasingly positive attitudes to the arts in Australia.

Over 16 million Australians are actively taking part in the arts, according to this latest research from the Australia Council.

'We've discovered that nine out of every 10 Australians aged over 15 made the arts part of their lives in the past year,' said Australia Council CEO, Kathy Keele.

'Nearly three quarters of Australians attended the arts last year, and most impressively four out of 10 of us creatively participated in the arts - that's over 7.2 million people exploring art around the country.'

Survey results are being presented in a national roadshow of arts sector briefings in major cities throughout 2010. Join the conversation about what the results mean for arts across Australia at www.australiacouncil.gov.au/participation.
Stephanie