Photo: Two Kinds of Yellow. 150 cm x 150 cm acrylic on stretched canvas.
Lorna Grear has exhibited widely. It is her 4th solo show at Flinders Street Gallery in Sydney, her last show was 2 years ago in 2023. Her work has been selected for the Mosman Art Prize, The Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, The Portia Geach Memorial Prize, 9 x 5 Waverley Woollahra Landscape Prize, The Paddington Art Prize, The Fleurieu Art Prize plus more.
She says,
My paintings in my solo show, Close to Home have been painted over 4 seasons twice; and reflect the cold, pale, winter months to the burst of spring with its wild flowers and bird song.
My colour palette changes as the rain, sun, wind and patterns change. I like landscape as an idea- it allows me to play and experiment with structures according to moods or feelings.
I’ve also included a range of studies- these are painted according to my temperament in one sitting. You’ll see some ‘wind’ and ‘stormy’ paintings, then calmer reflective paintings. They are usually painted quickly but are vital to my overall body of work. Sometimes the ideas I find in the smaller works take a year or more to be revealed in a larger work.
These paintings are offerings of hope. It is in this spirit which I share these paintings with you.
The exhibition runs until Saturday 10th May 2025 Gallery hours: 11am – 6pm, Wed – Sat or by appointment 61 Flinders Street Surry Hills, NSW, 2010 Phone 61 2 93805663
Lorna Grear at Flinders Street Gallery, 61 Flinders Street, Surryhills, NSW
OPENING SATURDAY 25 NOVEMBER 2023 4- 6 pm
It’s my 3rd solo exhibition at Flinders Street Gallery- the majority of this work started on my sabbatical last year and has carried through to this year. Mostly are small paintings, paintings which I have been able to carry through the bush – some painted directly en plein air, others, painted in the studio from memory.
Paintings are from Gundungurru and Wiradjuri Country, (Charbon and Southern Highlands); acrylic, gouache and oil on plywood.
It was a good time for me, painting and exploring different rhythms and emotions. Other the years, getting to know different areas of the bush, has taught me many things, the change in seasons; looking at and feeling the wind, hearing birdsong and observing light. I understand how fortunate we are, living in this vast and beautiful country whilst there is so much turmoil in the world.
If you can’t make it to the opening, I’ll be at the gallery on Fridays and Saturdays; 12- 4pm if you’d like to say hi, grab a coffee or just a look… or call in to the gallery at other times to see the show; Wed- Sat, 11- 6pm. Show continues until Saturday 16 November.
My painting, Tea Tree Haze was painted during a long stint in the bush. It was just before Spring and there was a lot of rain around- I could smell the tea tree everywhere. As the water dries- a mist forms above the tea tree bush- my painting is a memory of this.
I always love painting slightly away from the subject as it allows for a poetic interpretation of painting, filled with personal rhythms and imaginative clusters. It’s like a dream.
Tea Tree Haze 76 x 91 cm, acrylic on canvas. Drop Shadow series
The 2023 Glebe Art Show will be held from the 18th to the 22nd of October at the Tramsheds, 1 Dalgal Way, Forest Lodge. The Glebe Art Show is a non-selective, non-acquisitive art show held annually since 1997, with prizes across several categories and all artwork offered for sale. The show aims to support and encourage both emerging and established artists currently living, working or studying within the City of Sydney and Inner West Council boundaries. Entries close on the 8th of October or earlier if hanging capacity is reached.
I have works in TEXTA- opens Thursday 5 October, 2023- Thurs- Sat 11- 5, Sun 12- 5 –
31 A Enmore Road, Enmore, Sydney, NSW – curated by Daniel Pressart. All welcome! https://drawspace.org/
DRAW Space, an independent artist-run space, provides a unique opportunity for artists to engage in new drawing research and showcase innovative works. Following a series of experimental solo and group shows, DRAW Space is thrilled to present the community-inclusive group show TEXTA in October 2023.
Textas, or felt pens, are a ubiquitous medium that many grew up with. These pens encourage a drive to create and a sense of play. Often overlooked as a fine art medium, this exhibit shows how these humble pens can produce bold, forceful artworks that call for attention.
TEXTA will open at 6pm on Thursday 5 October.
TEXTA features 9 unique practices that use the medium: Quinn Chen, Jake Alexander Cruz, Lorna Grear, Lily Langley, Jacqueline McIntyre, Ngarra, Charmaine Pike, Jeremy Smith and Yuck.
The exhibition features a community drawing table at the centre of the room, allowing the attendees to draw and add to an ever-changing work.
The exhibition runs from Thursday 5 October to Sunday 5 November.
Exhibiting artists will give an artist talk at midday Saturday 7 October, chaired by curator Daniel Press.
A special showing of community drawings from the drawing table will then show for one night at 6pm on Tuesday 7 November.
Featured artists also contributed to a colouring book / catalogue essay hybrid that plays on the childhood and lowbrow connotations of the medium. The hybrid book features word puzzles, comics, and academic essays on the medium.
Lorna Grear is represented by Flinders Street Gallery.
Charmaine Pike is represented by Defiance Gallery.
Ngarra is represented by Mossenson Galleries. Ngarra drawings courtesy of Mossenson Galleries and Mossenson Art Foundation.
This work is painted from memory- it has the feeling of an enclosed scrub area. I go there to get lost. Once I discovered a snake skin whilst sitting there, another time I came across a wild pig with her babies in the same spot. It doesn’t feel like many people have ever sat here- it’s in a remote area – you can only reach it by foot. For years the creek that runs close to this was dry- it now has running water with small rapids.
I was trying to paint the feeling of looking through scrub and seeing glimpses of the creek through tea tree bush and spikey leaves.
Of course the work has fave influences of Cubism, geometry and Cezanne . It was exhibited in the Drop Shadow show at Flinders Street Gallery, Sydney and framed by Frameart Sydney.
Not available- Sold/ Private collection …. Gouache on art board- 73 x 83 cm framed
Early bird enquiries contact Jason Martin; flindersstgallery@bigpond.com
I’ll be showing unseen gouaches and paintings.
Sky Above, gouache on art card, 15 x 20cm, 2021, framed
DROP SHADOW
These works play with the many beautiful and varied possibilities within painting and drawing.
In the past I have been a structuralist, a formalist, definately a colourist, and even at dusk – an impressionist painter! I respond to sensations, and forms and energy. This show I’m using landscape as my base – it grounds me.
I see a series of paintings like words in a sentence. Each word has significance yet the sentence provides the context. I sometimes think it would be perfect to keep the whole sentence together. But, then, poets are good at using singular words- to draw attention to moments. Perhaps, then, each of these paintings, are like moments in the specific time period.
At times, I like a crowded space- as though the picture plane is enveloping me like a blanket. Other times I pull it all apart and leave only the essential…
ALL WELCOME for drinks… Saturday 4 JUNE, 4-6pm; Flinders Street Gallery, 61 Flinders Street, Surryhills, NSW, Australia
My drawing practice is paramount to my visual art practice. I make many, many drawings as studies and ideas for other work. Inevitably the texta drawings become works in their own right. They are the final works.
The discovery of texta pens has allowed me to work through structures and colour ideas in a different way to painting. I like drawing for its versatility, and directness- the flow of line and quick resolve. This suite of works rely on my memory of real places and my imagination to allow for ‘digressions’ into surreal and colourful landscapes.
When drawing, I find myself thinking of many past and current influences being reworked into new drawings. In drawing, the realisation is instant.
Flinders St Gallery, 61 Flinders Street Surry Hills, Wednesday to Saturday 11.00am – 6.00pm
19 September – 3 October 2020
The paintings in this exhibition mark a return to a sort of figuration for me. The landscapes were painted during the haze of the January fires. Smokey light and a pink haze covered Sydney and its surrounds. I was looking for a grounding, a return to something solid after such an unsettling start to the year. Bushfires were blazing uncontrollably. Since then we’ve had floods and now COVID19. The year became reflective for me – it gave me time for solitude, a time to consider.
When I’m in the bush I always turn to the landscape- I can’t help it- I find it a very natural impulse to paint the light and the big vast spaces. This time was also different- I had started to paint a series of Max Beckman copies. At the same time I had started painting in life drawing classes- directly from the model. I knew I needed to return to life painting in order to paint any figure paintings in the future.
The show From Flesh to Thunder is a personal metaphor relating to a return to working from life. All the paintings in this show (apart from 2) have been painted directly from either landscape or the figure. The landscapes, painted plein-air and the life paintings are studies for me to use for larger studio works. They are small and personal however after painting them I realised they could be shown as they are. Some are fast- they are spontaneous and are usually worked with one layer. They are meant to capture the particular moment, the natural phenomena of wind, or fastness or light….. it goes on. I don’t tend to work over them – they exist in the tradition of plein-air painting.
The large plein-air work titled Wild Card was painted in the middle of a large open space in the heat and wind. I had returned from a 3 hour walk from the creek, it was hot and I felt a freedom. This work is an outpouring of looking for something solid within.
One of the only studio works in the exhibition, The Offering is structured with a gestural orange line describing the beautiful yet complicated space of foliage and bush- yet at the same time more than that. It is a mustering of personal energy, a type of renewal of one’s spirituality to offer back. When I paint these the influence of so many artists is revealed. This one makes me think of Kandinsky, Bridget Riley or John Peart – there are so many.
You’ll see the second room filled with life paintings. Renee, Ishita, Lulu, Vanessa and Rosie – some of the regular models at Alpha House. Each model has his/her own quality which in turn demands different responses. The painted sketches are works in their own right, sitting solidly in the realm of life painting. You’ll see the language of creating an image- a line might describe both the edge of a face yet at the same time be a shadow on the wall. You’ll see the core of my visual language – Cubist, Modernist and Expressionism developed to tell future stories.
Portia Geach Memorial Award finalists revealed Perpetual announces 2020 shortlist for Australia’s most recognised portrait prize for women A list of 61 works by 59 artists has been announced today for the country’s most distinguished portrait prize for female artists, the Portia Geach Memorial Award. The $30,000 annual prize is administered by the Award Trustee, Perpetual. Established in 1961 by Florence Kate Geach, in memory of her sister, artist Portia Geach, the Portia Geach Memorial Award recognises an Australian female artist for the best portrait painted from life of a man or woman distinguished in art, letters or the sciences. Born in 1873 in Melbourne, Portia Geach studied with John Singer Sargent and Lawrence Alma-Tadema in London and was also a lifelong activist for women’s rights. She established the Housewives Progressive Association of New South Wales, The Housewives Magazine in 1933 and the Progressive Journal two years later to promote issues such as equal pay for women and the right to hold public office. The judging panel for this year’s award comprised Ms Anita Belgiorno-Nettis, Trustee of Art Gallery of New South Wales, Ms Natalie Wilson, Curator of Australian and Pacific Art at The Art Gallery of New South Wales and Ms Jane Watters, Director S.H Ervin Gallery. Some of the well-known sitters for this year’s award include radio presenter Phillip Adams; actor Claudia Karvin; author and playwright Louis Nowra; indigenous dancers Ella Havelka and Tayvonne Cora; TV presenter Richard Morecroft; dancer Anthea Pilko; the late Jack Mundey; businessman Luca Belgiorno-Nettis; Francophile Professor Ross Steele AM and concert pianist Simon Tedeschi.
LORNA GREAR Lockdown in the bath, gouache on art board (self portrait)
The winner of the 2020 Portia Geach Memorial Award will be revealed on Thursday 13 August with an exhibition of all finalists open for viewing by the public from 14 August – 20 September at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, The Rocks. For more information on the award, visit http://www.shervingallery.com.au Media Enquiries: Jane Watters 02 9258 0133 / 0414 717 044
Lorna Grear 