Art offers insight into observation
EXHIBITIONS that pay homage to place and circumstance by artists who have a local connection, and a body of work that offers an introduction to pictorial composition provide fascinating insights into observation and the craft of painting. The Cam Robertson Gallery at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery is showing Once a local…, an exhibition of works drawn from the gallery’s Toowoomba City Collection.
Each artist has some local connection, and each has contributed to the cultural capital of our region.
Phillip McConnell, who ran a successful pottery outside Toowoomba for many years, is represented by a classically elegant ceramic vessel.
Photography features strongly with works by Graham Burstow that show his skill in composing a scene and imbuing it with a story and Victoria Cooper’s quirky pinhole image indicating the potential of humble technology.
There is a visual sequence by Doug Spowart, while John Elliott’s street snapshot captures the essence of nostalgia in a passing moment.
The robust watercolours by Kenneth Macqueen are a pleasant foil to the ephemeral light in Elvie Burstow’s impressionistic watercolour.
Included in the exhibition are works from Waste Not: A Material Issue, the first exhibition at the gallery when it opened in its new location in 1994.
Participating artists reflected the recycled nature of the building by using re-purposed materials to create new statements.
Merv Muhling’s sculptural still life consists of timber, metal, and papier-mache.
The fanciful flying device by Warren Palmer is made from a glass jar, pill packets, and various household items.
Michael Schlitz used discarded materials from the gallery building site, and Joanne Smith’s triptych references salvage from a shipwreck.
The Amos Gallery at the Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery is featuring the exhibition Picture Plane with works from the city collections.
It is a frugal and thoughtful selection of paintings allowing room to contemplate how composition and the positioning of imagery engage the viewer and contribute to the spatial illusion of depth on the two-dimensional picture plane.
Composition is about the placement of visual elements arranged according to organising principles of design.
It is crucial to the success of a painting because it shapes the viewer’s response.
A focal point creates the moment of contact that leads the eye around the whole work.
The twins of unity and variety play an important role in which different parts interact to balance the composition and create a unified picture.
The paintings play with spatial ambiguity through line as in the work by Robert Moore, the light auras around John Coburn’s shapes, and through the form and reflection used by Lawrence Daws.
Surface and texture also contribute to spatial awareness seen in the soft veils of diffused light by Peter Laverty, the visceral layers of colour by Davida Allen, and in John Rigby’s leafy filters.