Artist Biography

Mary Hennekam, born in Reading, England,arrived in Australia with her Irish parents in 1949. Educated at Kildare College and Brigidine Teachers’ College and became a primary schoolteacher. She taught in Victorian primary schools for four years, a further two years’ teaching in London as a ‘temp’ in some of the city’s roughest schools, a daunting experience for a young teacher from overseas. Resuming teaching in Melbourne, Mary, who had always nursed a passion for art, commenced a Fine Arts degree at Prahran Technical College. Marriage, helping her husband run a farm business and raising a family of three children effectively shelved her degree course for several years. Returning to art study in the mid ’70s, Mary attended Frankston TAFE. Unable to find any creative’ response to the course, she began specialist course studies with various distinguished artists over a number of years and so reached her own distinctive style that has won her recognition as an award winning artist. Mary Hennekam’s paintings are hung in many public and  private collections throughout Australia and overseas. Mary Hennekam now exhibits at Mingara Gallery on Phillip Island.

 SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1997, Artists Garden, Fitzroy. Australia
2000, Band Hall Gallery, Kyneton. Australia
2001, Manyung Gallery, Mt. Eliza. Australia
2002, Manyung Gallery, Mt. Eliza. Australia
2004, Manyung Gallery, Mt. Eliza. Australia
2009, Art Sydney, Sydney. Australia
2010, Gallery 307, Sydney. Australia

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1995, “Mixed Masters of Conscience Error”. Chisholm Instituteof TAFE. Australia
1995, Ross Smith Gallery. Australia
1995, Frankston Cultural Centre Grand Opening Show. Australia
1997, McClelland Gallery Grand Opening. Australia
1998, Without Pier Gallery. Australia
1999, “One Square Foot” Band Hall Gallery. Australia
1999, Without Pier Gallery. Australia
1999, “Grand Opening Show” Manyung Gallery. Australia
2003, “Brushman of the Bay” Manyung Gallery. Australia
2003, Bark Modern Art, Hong Kong.
2008, Art Images Gallery, Adelaide. Australia.
2009, Greenwood Gallery, South Melbourne. Australia.
2009, Salt Gallery, Queenscliff Victoria. Australia.
2009, Scope Gallery, Victoria. Australia.
2010, Mingara Gallery, Victoria. Australia.
2010, Greenwood Gallery, Melbourne. Australia.
2011, Red Pepper Gallery, Daylesford. Australia.
2011, Design Made Trade, Jeffs Shed, Melbourne. Australia.

COMMISSIONS
2001, Peninsula Animal Hospital

PUBLICATIONS
2005, Selected Contemporary Artists of Australia by Michael Berry

John Mutsaers
Dutch – Australian, Painter – Sculptor  

 Born Eindhoven, Holland 1942, arrived Melbourne 1956.

 John has held more than 33 solo exhibitions in Australia and Europe during his 25 year career as a professional artist. John’s art is represented in public, corporate, and private collections around the world, including Holland, England, Ireland, USA, China, Canada and Australia. Collectors include the late Princess Margaret, UK. Brigadier General Charles Duke, Astronaut and Lunar Explorer, Apollo 16.  Latrobe Regional Gallery. Bega regional Gallery.

 
John Mutsaers. Grad Dip. MA
Dutch/Australian
Born Holland 1942 Arrived Australia 1956.
Painter, sculptor, art teacher
John has held more than 33 solo exhibitions in Australia and Europe and participated in numerous group shows culminating in several major art awards.
In 2008 John exhibited of a series of sculptures in Federation Square in Melbourne. The sculptures titled, “The Potato” were made in response to the United Nation’s International Year of the Potato in recognition of the UN’s ecological and humanitarian theme and to honor the men and women in the potato industry in Gippsland. The sculptures are now permanently located on the Princes Highway near Trafalgar Victoria.
He recently celebrated 25 years as a professional artist with an exhibition in his Inverloch studio; Easter weekend 2011. In November 2011 John held a successful exhibition in Melbourne.

Pip Wilson Green                           

Pip is a new arrival in Australia and her work is bringing a touch of the unusual to the local arts scene. Originally from Ayrshire in Scotland, Pip arrived in Victoria as a volunteer at the Inverloch Dinosaur Dig in the summer of 2007. Her involvement with the Dinosaur Dreaming project parallels her series of paintings of Australian animals that are presented here.
Her paintings are “like an accident - as though the animals have surprised themselves by glancing in a mirror” she says. The detail and precision of her work is a progression from her former career as a professional makeup artist for film and television in the UK, where she was a successful special effects artist in several well known films including Braveheart and Rob Roy.
She is looking forward to advancing her artistic portrayals of Australian Animals.

Paul Margocsy’s Biography:

Paul was born in August 1945. As a child he loved to draw but had no formal training or direction. After school he started window dressing at Myer Melbourne. He was called up for two years in 1966 as a conscript and served one year overseas in the army.

In 1971 he went to England and spent three years travelling and working. Married in Australia in 1974, he began painting murals for children’s nurseries. In 1978 he became engrossed in wildlife art. After much research into ornithology and through self-taught efforts and experiments he started to get the hang of it. A few years later he became a member of “The Wildlife Art Society of Australasia” and the very next year won first prize for the best painting.

Since that eventful exhibition many things began to formulate ~ Paul was included in a book launch in 1990 featuring 70 of the best living traditional artists in Australia. He also had a book published on his own paintings. Australia Post commissioned him in 1991 to do a water bird series of stamps and he was subsequently commissioned by the United Nations to paint a series of endangered species in 1994, which was released in Vienna.

Paul has had solo exhibitions in London and Japan, six solo shows in America and two at the exclusive “Raffles” Hotel in Singapore, making his international career blossom. To be chosen to exhibit at the prestigious “Leigh Yawkey Woodson Birds In Art” show in America (80 selected from over 3500 entries) was a “feather in his cap”. Paul was chosen two years running. Paul was honoured with a fellow membership to “The Wildlife Art Society Of Australasia” for services to the Society and wildlife art. In 2006, Paul became the first Australian wildlife artist to have a solo exhibition in Hong Kong. In 2008 Paul released his second book on wildlife entitled, “Away With The Birds”.

Profile & Text

In the latter half of the 20th century, a number of notable Australian artists including Guy Grey-Smith and Fred Williams were attracted to the landscape of the Pilbara region in Western Australia. Often, their initial interest grew into a significant area of investigation.

Jo Darvall’s recent paintings encapsulate the essence of this area. Wide bands of loosely applied and layered colours beautifully describe a landscape that is flat, hot and dry. But when Darvall first travelled to the Pilbara, she was confronted by the markedly different landscape in which she found herself. The remote sites to which she travelled were located in arid, rocky terrain that is sparsely covered in prickly vegetation and this vast, empty landscape brought about in her feelings of isolation and anxiety. The open cut mines that brutally scar the area didn’t look particularly ugly or out of place to her in such alien territory.

Darvall tries to imagine the lives of early prospectors in the region. Experiencing the same extremes in temperature and distance (but with the comforts of contemporary communications and equipment), she often thinks about the families who packed their tools and belongings into a wheelbarrow and set out to walk inland from the nearest port to find gold or work or simply opportunity. Mining boom or gold rush; dislocation, potential gains, tangible losses and an attitude of trying to making the most of it are all part of the deal.

Darvall’s earlier works were produced in Victoria. Her abstract paintings that were inspired by the You Yangs are characterised by fat, pounding lines and a rich palette of browns and greens. Insects appeared in some of her works after Darvall witnessed the annual migration of bogong moths in northern Victoria. Clearly identifiable in these works, the moths have been more abstracted over time as they have come to metaphorically represent the journey they undertake and, eventually, all those who journey. As Darvall now says, “they embody the spirits of travellers”.

In Darvall’s Pilbara inspired works, the insects have a fragile and encrusted appearance and are no longer present in the paintings themselves as she felt the moths “needed to make room for all that space”. Instead, she has produced a series of small sculptures of moth-like forms
that stand in front of the paintings. This enables the paintings to act as theatrical backdrops against which the Journeyer can be presented.

Over the last eighteen months Darvall’s feelings about the Pilbara have shifted. Feelings of isolation are softening into a comfortable solitude and anxiety is giving way to curiosity. As with those before her, the strange beauty of the landscape is starting to reveal itself to Darvall
on her journeys through the spinifex.

Louise Morrison
Artist + Writer + Curator

Jo Darvall is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts and co-founder of Artist for Kids Culture ACK. Now in Western Australia, Darvall currently lectures at both Kidogo Art Institute and Claremont School of Art and works from her studio in an old ship stores building in Fremantle.

Artist PROFILE

Born Yarram Victoria, Australia 6/3/1966

EDUCATION

Exhibitions

2011
Infest Group exhibition curated by Thelma Johns; Gallery Central, Perth WA
PAWA Print Prize (exhibited) Moors Building Fremantle WA

2010           �
Addaption Biodiversity Art website Exhibition Symbiotica Biodiversity University WA
Off the Wall, PS Art Exhibition Space, Fremantle Festival WA
Selected NFV 2010 Annual Art Award, City of Rockingham WA
PAWA Art Prize (exhibited), Moors Building Fremantle, W.A          �
Cossack Art Prize (exhibited), Cossack W.A
Threads the Art of Woman, Bright Space Gallery, StKilda VIC
ACT Writers Centre Exhibition of Artists Books, Tuggerong Arts Centre ACT
Art in Public Places City of Hobsonsbay, VIC

2009
Studio Exhibition PS Art Studios, Pakenham Street, Fremantle, W. A.
Christmas Show Lancaster Press Gallery, Brooklyn Melbourne
Three Stories and Emma Keep, Katrina Manton Gallery Albert Park
Etched in Stone, with Mike Nicholls, Geoff Ricardo, Lancaster Press, Brooklyn VIC
Curated Women at War, Red Cross photographic exhibition at Federation Square, Melbourne.

Feasibility study for the ‘Living Wall’, Hosier Lane City of Melbourne.
Illustrated Children’s Book for playwright Jane Harrison “The butterfly, the bee, the moth and the rose.”

2008
Artists for Kids Exhibition, Brightspace Melbourne
Grand Opening, Katrina Manton Gallery, Albert Park, Melbourne.

2007
Artists for Kids Culture, Nellie Casten Gallery South Yarra
Art in Public Places – Hobsonsbay Council, VIC
Selection Williamstown Tattersal Contempory Art Prize 07

2006
Suburban Art Project with Mike Nicholls & James Smeaton. Curated by Tania Blackwell Melbourne Fringe Festival
Footscray Community Arts Centre Collection Exhibition with Kim Westcott, Mike Nicholls and others Curated by Mario
Studio Exhibition with Katrina Manton Splash Art Studios, Spotswood
Artists for Kids Culture, Jackman Gallery, St Kilda
Group Show with Gaberal Bates & Maxine Jepson Curated by Tracey McIrvine Jackman Gallery, St Kilda

2005
Incubator Exhibition Series exhibiting with Geoff Ricardo Curated by Tania Blackwell
Phaze 3 Gallery, Newport

2005
Artists for Kids Culture Charity Exhibition Jackman Gallery, St Kilda
Selection Williamstown Tattersal Contempory Art Prize 05

2004-07
Founded Splash Art Studios with Katrina Manton.

2003
Artists for the Tarkine Curated by Phillip Doggett-Williams & Ashley Crawford Bright Space, St Kilda
Art Expedition – The Tarkine, Tasmania organised by Ashley Crawford & Phillip Doggett-Williams including John Young & Mark Schaller.

2002
Advised Melbourne City Council on the formation and sponsorship of ArtPlay.

2001
Artists for Kids Culture Mira Fine Art Gallery, Melbourne

1995
Founded Artists for Kids Culture Trust with David Larwill & Emma Davies.
1995-2007 Director of Artists for Kids Culture Trust.

1993
Artist Studio – Australian Print Workshop.
The Cubbies, Roar Galleries, Fitzroy

1992
 The Erotica Show, The Lounge Nightclub
Waste Management curated by Amond Scott, Tolarno Gallery, St Kilda.
Art Show Richmond Art Studios
1st Prize Fringe Arts Furniture Exhibition Poster Melbourne Fringe Festival

1991
 Made in Fitzroy Curated by David Ellis Opening of Art Space, Fitzroy Town Hall
O.T.C. Tech Art Fax Exhibition curated by Auguste Blackman Sydney

1990
Art & Life with Ewan Cameron & others The Next Wave Festival, Melbourne
Art Bizarre Melbourne Fringe Arts Festival
Life in the Alley Street Artists & others Painters of De Mews, Fitzroy

1989
Frog on a Parrots Back Spoleto Fringe Gallery, Fitzroy
Brush & Hammer Spoleto Fringe Gallery, Fitzroy
Print Life The Women’s Gallery, Fitzroy
EX/AU/CAB Series Richmond & Fitzroy
Eight Views Stuart Gerstman Galleries, Richmond

1988
The Squeakiest Wheel Footscray Community Arts Centre
Important Works Fine Art Research & Technology, Sydney
EX/AU/CAB Series Richmond & Fitzroy

PUBLICATIONS/MEDIA

The writing’s on the wall William Yeoman, The West Australian 26 July 2011
Artsource Lifetime Achievements Awards The West Australian 2011
The Power Star News Group 2009
Jos hope springs eternal for the Wests youth – Arts” Brimbank Leader
New Art Jo Darvall’s Beautifull Butterflys By Xavier Toby, Lost At E Minor 2009
Art goes to print in Brooklyn” by Stella Tzobankiss Leader Newspaper 2009
Challenging Work The Mail The Advertiser  2009
Smart Arts by Richard Watts 3RRR radio Melbourne 2006
Overland Extra 2 Etchings 1989 Supplement to Overland 117

Artists Statement

Jo Darvall is an accomplished artist whose work is developing in new and exciting directions. Her current Dwellingup series consists of evocative and beautiful work. It is inspired by her recent move to Freemantle in W.A. from Williamstown in Victoria. Dwellingup Forest is a secret haven for the locals of Perth. Darvall finds this forest ‘delicious and mysterious, and a place in which nature appears at its most luxurious and mystical’. It evokes a feeling of utopia for Darvall given its arid, red, hot surrounds. The artist has introduced a new palette to her work to reflect the colour and mood of the forest featuring greys, silver and green with highlights of vermillion. She is currently interested in the approaches of traditional and contemporary painters including Tucker, Nolan, Tuckson and Lin Onus. This current body of work represents a departure in content and style from Darvall’s most recent work which featured the resilience and fragility of small creatures such as the moth, butterfly and dragonfly. Darvall ‘delights in the delicate yet robust strength of these moths, butterflies and other creatures who survive with such grace and dignity’ so she elevates them to the status of hero. This series is a large and well developed body of work that includes paintings, prints and a beautifully realized artist book, which have all been widely exhibited in Victoria.

Artistic Aim

Darvall’s aim as an artist is to create interesting and beautiful works that have a freshness of colour and engaging marks. As a young artist, Darvall’s artistic intention was more political. She made art films, created and performed in performances with art bands, worked with groups like Spoleto Fringe Festival creating mobile sculptures, exhibitions in back streets and painted trams. Darvall has also used her artist background to embrace charity. She founded the Artist for Kids Culture Trust with friend and artist David Larwill. The charity still exists now some 15 years later, and is supported by a large number of artists and art supporters. Coming from this active arts/charity background, Darvall still wants to create change, and a better place for others. However, her aim now is to achieve this in a different way by creating visually beautiful paintings, which tell a story. She is trying to give the viewer a pleasant and uplifting emotional experience. The creatures which feature in her recent work are strong, and possess dignity and purpose. The Dwellingup series celebrates the beauty and mystery of our natural world.

Form, Colour and Artistic Process

Composition is very important to Darvall’s work, and the placement of forms within an environment must enhance the message she is trying to convey. Colour is another very important consideration in her work, and creating colour and its application in a painting is an ongoing journey of discovery for Darvall. Darvall cites Clarice Becketts soft palette and paint application as a source of inspiration in creating a calming effect.  However, to this effect, the artist adds a spark of colour to capture the attention of the viewer and bring them into the magical world that she is painting.

Darvall makes her paintings through a process of layering of her paint. She is always surprised by ‘accidents’ created in this process, some more successful than others.  These spontaneous marks, or dripped paint can be the making of an image for Darvall. She is inspired by the naked painted line of Tony Tuckson, with its strength and honesty, and tries to avoid over working an image, as this often leads to tired lines and flat surfaces. Darvall also looks to the master of translucence, Turner, when glazing and overpainting, using the layering process to great effect

Written by Heather van Heerwaarden

“Artist Statement

I am very interested in the physical characteristics and the different and unique personalities of individuals. My intrigue and curiosity of the nature of people and animals are most evident in my portraiture, which I enjoy painting very much. My detailed and traditional style of portraiture requires many hours of careful exploratory drawn and painted studies and photographs of the sitter. This assists me in determining his or her personality and physical characteristics that I may portray the sitter in a manner that is reflective of their unique individual character in the final portrait.

My preferred medium of choice is oil on canvas, employing a traditional classic oil painting technique.  I am inspired by the master painters of the 18^th and 19^th century and in particular George Stubbs (1724-1806) and Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899) I also admire the paintings of Australian expatriate Jeffery Smart (1921- ).

Wendy Jane Sheppard B.A. HONS, F.R.S.A.S.A

• Dedicated professional portrait artist and art tutor.
• Wendy-Jane Sheppard attracts acclaim throughout Australia for her highly realistic oil paintings and graphite drawings and is a multi award winning artist and is highly regarded for her completed commissions; a comprehensive curriculum vita listing all awards is available on request.

Academic qualifications

• 2006 Bachelor of Visual Arts, Painting, University of South Australia.
• 2007 Bachelor of Visual Arts, (Honours), University of South Australia.

Professional association

• Fellow and past President of the Royal South Australian Society of Arts
• Member Portrait Artists Australia
• Member AGRA, Australian Guild of Realist Artists
• Member Ringwood Artist Society
• Registered teacher of the Michael Wilcox School of Colour”

-portraitartistsaustralia.com.au

Paul Margocsy’s Biography:

Paul was born in August 1945. As a child he loved to draw but had no formal training or direction. After school he started window dressing at Myer Melbourne. He was called up for two years in 1966 as a conscript and served one year overseas in the army.

In 1971 he went to England and spent three years travelling and working. Married in Australia in 1974, he began painting murals for children’s nurseries. In 1978 he became engrossed in wildlife art. After much research into ornithology and through self-taught efforts and experiments he started to get the hang of it. A few years later he became a member of “The Wildlife Art Society of Australasia” and the very next year won first prize for the best painting.

Since that eventful exhibition many things began to formulate ~ Paul was included in a book launch in 1990 featuring 70 of the best living traditional artists in Australia. He also had a book published on his own paintings. Australia Post commissioned him in 1991 to do a water bird series of stamps and he was subsequently commissioned by the United Nations to paint a series of endangered species in 1994, which was released in Vienna.

Paul has had solo exhibitions in London and Japan, six solo shows in America and two at the exclusive “Raffles” Hotel in Singapore, making his international career blossom. To be chosen to exhibit at the prestigious “Leigh Yawkey Woodson Birds In Art” show in America (80 selected from over 3500 entries) was a “feather in his cap”. Paul was chosen two years running. Paul was honoured with a fellow membership to “The Wildlife Art Society Of Australasia” for services to the Society and wildlife art. In 2006, Paul became the first Australian wildlife artist to have a solo exhibition in Hong Kong. In 2008 Paul released his second book on wildlife entitled, “Away With The Birds”.

 “I take an intuitive approach to ceramics, learnt from observing and teaching children.  I madly envy their raw and unaffected attitude to art making and their immediate and innate desire to be creative.  Their work most often obtains its strength due to its simplicity and honesty and these are the qualities I most strive for in my practice.

My sculptured female forms represent hope and grace and the fragility of life – and they have served to reflect the very happenings in my life.  I incorporate birds in my designs as metaphors of longevity and escape.”

Sam Varian

Biographical Notes

1966                                    Born 18 May  Hobart, Tasmania

1990-91                            move Perth, Western Australia

1992                                    London

1999-2011                        Mt Macedon, Victoria

1999                                    1 September birth Tallulah

2004                                    3 January birth Samuel

Studies

2007                                    Diploma of Education

                                                Melbourne University

1997-1998                         Honours (Fine Arts)

                                                University of Western Australia

1996                                    Australians Studying Abroad

                                                Past and Present European Tour

                                                Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris

1995-1996                         Bachelor Fine Arts

                                                Monash University (Melbourne)

1994                                    Study Bachelor of Arts in Education (Secondary)

                                                Edith Cowan University

1992                                    Study Advanced Certificate of Art & Design

                                                TAFE Western Australia

1988-1989                        Study Associate Diploma Finished Art

                                                Hobart Technical College

Group Exhibitions

2011            Clunes Art Prize 2011

                        Finalist

                        Country Life

Lauiston Press Gallery, Kyneton

2010            Group A1.0

                        Warburton Lane Exhibits               Melbourne

                        Chair 14

                        Thornby  Victoria

                        Four Conversations

                        Hullabaloo Gallery, Malmsbury Victoria 

2009            Artist in Residence

                        New Gisborne Primary School

                        Ceramic “Life Skills”Totem Poles

                        Buttlejorkk

                        Dromkeen, Riddells Creek

                        Celebrating Sculpture

                        Sunbury Boiler House

                        Creative Palettes

                        Macedon Ranges Art Collective

                        Woodend Winter Arts Festival

2004            Anything Goes

                        Mad Gallery, Lancefield Victoria

1998            Honours Graduate Exhibition

                        Gulag Gallery, Perth

                        Under the Bridge

                        Cullity Gallery

                        Artists Against Racism

                        Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts

                        Our Journey Our Choices

                        Cullity Gallery Western Australia

                        Hatched

                        Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts

                        Guild Art Exhibition

                        University of Western Australia

1997            Outside in Space

                        Cullity Gallery, Western Australia

1996            Larcardo Peace Prize

                        Honourable Mention

                        Monash University

ARTISTS STATEMENT

I take an intuitive approach to ceramics, learnt from observing and teaching children.  I madly envy their raw and unaffected attitude to art making and their immediate and innate desire to be creative.  Their work most often obtains its strength due to its simplicity and honesty and these are the qualities I most strive for in my practice.

My sculptured female forms represent hope and grace and the fragility of life – and they have served to reflect the very happenings in my life.  I incorporate birds in my designs as metaphors of longevity and escape.

sam varian 

July  2011