Uncategorized – Lorna Grear

Mosman Art Prize 2022

2022 Mosman Art Prize, installation view, Mosman Art Gallery. Image courtesy Mosman Art Gallery and © the artists. Photograph: Jacquie Manning.

Painting, titled TwoOpen is a studio painting- I call them secret shed paintings; they’re spontaneous and brave and can be about many things.

Here’s what I wrote; ‘Two Open is a painting which celebrates painting. It is a culmination of looking at landscape over the last few years as an entry into what lays beneath the obvious subject. Other ideas are always at play when painting; light, rhythm, pattern, favourite influences. This painting has a little bit of everything which I love.’

Lorna Grear is represented by Flinders Street Gallery and held her recent solo show in June 2022. Her work has previously been selected for the Portia Geach Memorial Art Prize, The Paddington Art Prize, The Adelaide Drawing Prize, Fishers Ghose Art Award and the Liverpool Art Prize.

Fishers Ghost Art Award

The Fisher’s Ghost Art Award is an annual art prize inviting artists to submit works in a variety of artistic categories and mediums. The Open Award is acquisitive to the Campbelltown City Council collection and in 2022, in celebration of the 60th Anniversary; the award is valued at $60,000. The exhibition will be open to the public from Saturday 29 October until Friday 9 December, 10 am – 4pm

My painting, titled Snakes And Ladders; 150 x 130 cm, acrylic on canvas, is selected as a finalist.

This painting originally took its subject from Bannaby Creek in the Southern Highlands. After a decade of no rain we now have fast, running, wild waters in this creek. It’s beautiful – with its twists and turns, over rocks and river stones. You can hear a cacophony of feral goats whilst being surrounded by a hundred Xanthorrhoea, or Balga Grass Plants. This painting is my tribute to the creek.

Fisher’s Ghost Art Award 2022

For painting enquiries go to Campbelltown Arts Centre or contact Jason Martin info@flindersstreetgallery.com

Undergrowth

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

2022 – Works on art board- gouache

These works were painted as small studies – actually at the time they were not studies at all – I didn’t paint them to think about making other works from – they are works within themselves. They are reactions to light and space and atmosphere. The works represent impulsive and intuitive inspirations to paint.

Works available. Contact Lornagrear@hotmail.com or Flinders Street Gallery; flinderstgallery@bigpond.com

Fisher’s Ghost Art Award 2018

My work- Pink Forest with Pink Legs, 69 cm x 89 cm, giclee print has been selected as a finalist for the contemporary Section, Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, 2018, Campbelltown Arts Centre. Printed by Dark Star Digital, Sydney.

pink forest with legs

ARTBAR at MCA

These images were displayed as ‘Digital Light Gardens’ at ArtBar, Museum of Contemporary Art, February 2018. Curated by Anney Bounpraseuth.

Soul Drummer (and)Lorna Grear, Paralands, MCA ARTBAR – Curated by Anney Bounpraseuth Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, February 2018, photograph: Peter Morgan

Soul Drummer (and)Lorna Grear, Paralands, MCA ARTBAR – Curated by Anney Bounpraseuth Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, February 2018, photograph: Peter Morgan

Lorna Grear, Paralands, MCA ARTBAR – Curated by Anney Bounpraseuth Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, February 2018, photograph: Peter Morgan

WEAVE

Opening Night: Friday 7 July 6-8pm

Artist Talks: Saturday 22 July 3-5pm.

WEAVE represents Grear’s new body of work. She uses the space of landscape as a starting point for abstractions. The finished works inevitably evolve into images beyond landscape, signifying personal, emotional or social events.

Grear states, ‘Landscape offers me a rhythmic structure where I can play within the imaginative constructs of painting at the same time offering a connection with nature. Colour, form, line, texture and pattern give me so many possibilities to create different compositions. The narrative is not obvious; I like to think of the paintings as thoughts or feelings.

Uncanny, random or specific references do enter the works. After the musician Prince died, I made many purple works with a haphazard rhythm. ‘Big Foot Monster’s is one of these. When Donald Trump was elected I made a work entitled Trump’s Bloodshed- with a grand old oak splitting the composition in two. The large painting; ‘Peppermint Tree’ uses this structure. Sometimes the trigger is public and at other times the impulse to make the work is unknown, it could be based in human identity.

Recently I’ve been listening to John Coltrane. In his music there’s an expression of feeling and meaning that implies rather than tells. The odd note there, a beat here, the fluid rhythm staggered by a loud vibration…

I’m always searching for that pivotal moment in painting where the structure balances the rhythm and where the feeling and the composition weave together’. Lorna Grear June 2017

Lorna Grear is a Sydney based artist who uses paintings, collages and sculptural relief works to emphasise ideas of process, order and the painterly sensation. Recently her abstract work involves convoluted patterns and structures which signify contemporary virtual and real environments or states of the mind. Most of the time the works respond to current affairs, personal travel or emotional experiences which influence or inspire the need for Lorna to respond with a visual work.

This latest body of work exist as digital prints, paintings and drawings. The digital works start as hand drawings of her surroundings then manipulated digitally; sometimes they are seen as wallpapers- other times they hang individually as large paper works.

The paintings stem from the hand-made drawings and the digital prints working as sketches for the paintings. It’s a master painting relationship.

Lorna has held numerous solo exhibitions including at the infamous Tailor Room Gallery, Sydney in 1998 – 2003 under the director, Lee Frost, Peloton Gallery in 2005, 2009, 2011 and MOP Projects in 2013. Her recent solo show is held at Airspace Projects, Marrickville, July 2017. Her work has been shown at; Imperial Slacks, Herringbone, SNO, Phatspace, Zitlip, Sheffer Gallery, Campbelltown Arts Centre, UTS Gallery, NAS and Firstdraft. Lorna’s work has been selected as a finalist for the Portia Geach Memorial Prize, The Fisher’s Ghost Open Award, Mosman Art Prize and the Liverpool Art Prize.

In her independent curatorial practice Lorna co- curated Here is a Fresh Egg, as part of a collective in Zitlip Gallery, 1994 and curated Homefront at Sheffer Gallery, Sydney in 2010 and The Baker’s Dozen at UTS Gallery, Sydney in 2012. Prior to this her time was spent in London, 1987- 1993, initiating community arts groups within the London squat scene, including Scarecrow Tiggy- an artist run co-operative in Camberwell, London with fellow artists Belle Tidswell and Jane Waudby. She is a graduate of three art universities in Sydney; Sydney College of the Arts (BVA, 1^st class Honours, and MVA), The National Art School, Sydney ( Dip F A) and Art & Design, UNSW ( Post Grad Cert Design 2014). She currently teaches painting and art history at TAFE NSW, Campbelltown College.

Gallery One, Fangled: Sally Clarke, Brenda Factor, Sean O’Connell and Laura Woodward

Gallery Two, Weave; Lorna Grear

The Cranny, Kiss Them While They’re Sleeping; Marion Abboud

Deep Space, FavourEconomy Volumes 1 & 2; Claire Field and Bronwyn Treacy

Exhibition runs from Friday 7 – Saturday 22 July

http://airspaceprojects.com

10 Junction Street Marrickville NSW 2204

+61 438 020 661 and +61 411 370 361

Open Thursday to Friday 11.00 – 6.00 and Saturday 11.00 – 5.00 the first three weeks of each month. Check the Airspace blog for special events, exhibition previews and any scheduling changes.

Catalogue to be published soon.

Lorna Grear Purple Parade acrylic on board, 21 x 15 cm, framed, 2017