Artwork born from the ashes of the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires will be on public display in Corryong during the upcoming bush festival.
The exhibition – ‘Land and Life’ – will be held at Davis Cottage from April 8th -14th of April.
It will be an engaging and vibrant show hosted by the local Walwa art group ‘Bridge the River Arts’ and will feature work by three local artists – Gayle Lee, Gillian Fahle and Ronda Teakel.
All three artists live and work on their cattle farms, which were severely affected by the bushfires.
After the disaster the trio met and started painting regularly together and realised they all shared a common love and interest of the land and everything to do with landscapes and nature.
The artists want to showcase a different interest within the Towong Shire, while also portraying the pure joy and beauty of the land on which they live.
Gayle, a landscape artist, has lived her adult life in the Victorian high country and draws her inspiration from the beauty, atmosphere, form and colours of its mountains, trees and rivers.
She aims to create landscapes that entice thoughts and emotions in the viewer, inspiring them to want to take a wander through her landscape and into her world of art.
As a young woman, Gillian went to an art academy in Italy then worked in an art studio in Milan, specialising in restoration and colour selection for silk screen reproduction of contemporary paintings.
This experience influenced her personal work with colour and perspective being paramount in her art works.
Gillian returned to farming in Australia 16 years later and she is an avid observer of nature, birds, animals portraying them brilliantly in her acrylic, water colour and most recently her oil pieces.
Ronda has been associated with the Upper Murray for many years and has been a permanent resident since 2019.
She is considered by Gayle and Gillian as the queen of “rock and grasses” with her ability to focus on the intricacies of the vegetation and monumental rock formations that are abundant in the high country.
Ronda finds the forest floors are a haven for fallen, leaves, twigs and drying grasses that provide intricate worlds of complex patterns and symphonies of colour that are often the foundation of her practice.
Gayle, Gillian and Ronda are three very different types of landscape artists who all share the common love of the land and life.
Bridge the River Arts has thanked Towong Shire Council and Joe Calvert (Co-ordinator for Recreation, Arts and Culture) for the support they have provided with access to bushfire recovery funding, enabling it to host the exhibition at Davis Cottage.
This article appeared in the Corryong Courier, 28 March 2024.
