Talking art
The Manawatu Art Expo opens with a dinner at the Palmerston North Convention Centre tonight, with guest speakers and live music. The Expo will also be held at the Convention Centre and will be open to the public on July 14-16, from 9am until 4:30pm. Guest speakers will talk on art-related topics over lunchtime during the three days. For more information go to: https://www.facebook.com/ events/1878795719034951/
Lyons doesn’t paint exact replicas of what he sees. Photographs are a tool he uses, but he says there is plenty of creative license in there too.
‘‘If you try and paint a piece of art that looks just like a photograph or just like an actual scene, you have to find somewhere that actually looks like a piece of art.’’
Lyons will have his landscapes for sale and they will rub shoulders with a wide range of styles at the expo.
On offer will be abstract through to contemporary art and a grand sweep of mediums will also be on show – water colour, oil, acrylic, mixed media, pen and ink, pencil, pastel art works, as well as three dimensional sculptural works.
Expo organiser Lois Price says the event takes months of organisation and the effort of a large team of Art Society volunteers. It’s paying off though, she says. The expo is becoming a popular annual event that has grown steadily over the past 10 years.
‘‘We are now attracting artists from all around the North Island, with the occasional one from the South. We get artists from as far away as Auckland and Tauranga, Hawke’s Bay and down to Wellington.’’
Artists that are often chipping away at home, in a make-shift studio or in a garden shed. A solitary starting point, seen through to completion. Artworks are packed up, put in the boot and brought into the public realm, where they become something in the eyes of others.