The Art Prize Project is a not for profit project to raise funds to promote art and sponsor a local student to pursue their creative education. It is structured as a community event in partnership with the University of Western Sydney and SIFE, and will attract a wide audience and high profile participants to the Hawkesbury region, embracing the cultural and economic environment of the region.

The success will be determined by the number of entries and amount of art sales, which will determine the amount of funding available to sponsor a local student or students. Early key performance indicators are the early commitments of artists to enter, and the establishment of first prize money of $10,000. Peoples’ Choice Award and Highly Commended Award will also be sponsored.

Historically, the Hawkesbury has a strong association with art and artists, which dates back to Australia’s earliest European settlement. The art prize is also a commitment to recognise these historical ties, and strengthen the cultural artistic community with contemporary creative ideas.

The goal is to see the Hawkesbury Art Prize set up as an event that occurs each year as a community partnership.

Entry forms will be available here .

THE ART PRIZE PROJECT

The Hawkesbury Art Prize applies business and economic concepts through an entrepreneurial approach to secure money from large private enterprises and channels it through a project that gives back to the local community by way of educational scholarship to a young, talented and creative member of the community. This innovative and not for profit project has wide community support and aims to bring a larger art prize to western Sydney and attract high profile artists to enter this competition in order to raise the profile of art in the region, give local artists a stage closer to home, and increase cultural development in the area.

A sponsor has been secured who has absolute confidence in the project, and is willing to donate the $10,000 first prize this year, and then each year if the project is successful, making the Hawkesbury Art Prize a sustainable annual community event. The profit for the project will be generated from the entry fee of $35 and the event will be widely publicized throughout the country. A minimum of 100 entries is expected, but could go as high as 500 this year. Discussions with other businesses in the area are still underway for ancillary prizes. Around 50 finalists work will be exhibited for sale which will also generate more income for the project.

There are three high profile judges: a University art curator, the principal of one of Australia’s most well known art schools, and a well known, award winning, established, practicing artist. The judging and event will take place in November this year. All preliminary advertising and press releases are under way.  The project aims to foster cultural creativity in the region and will be promoted throughout the country through art magazines, societies, universities and businesses, promoting a vision for an annual cultural event for western Sydney, akin to those already highly successful and established art prizes in the Sydney metropolitan area.

Decorative beauty has emerged, and colour has been embraced as the central theme in a story of modern and contemporary articulation of the landscape. Living in rural Sydney overlooking the Hawkesbury River, Mellissa’s work ranges between vibrant interpretations of her local landscape to intricate wood & linocuts. It is a retreat that allows her passions for the natural landscape and bird life to abound. Her combination of quirkiness and calm blend to create works with a strong spiritual base, and local cultural significance.

Her appreciation of colour tantalizes the senses. She applies a myriad of nearly identical sized dabs of blended colour, animating the surface and causing it to take on the quality of a mosaic. Splashes of colour bathed in the natural light are reminiscent of the Impressionist painters, where she rejects tonal sobriety, and employs a technique where luminosity and a mixture of material colours perpetuate the sensation of variegated spots and dabs. Her faceted mosaic surface of impressionism transforms to a contemporary and dynamic style.

Mellissa’s compositions are arranged harmoniously, yet her palette is daring, and her divided brushstrokes produce a robust art, based on sensation. There is an instant response to nature, which is spontaneous, whilst the mood of the pictures is conveyed most obviously through the breathtaking colour and light, with large buttery strokes. The paintings evoke a self contained quiet and melancholy – relaxed and composed and comfortable in their bush surroundings.

Mellissa is a recipient of many prizes and awards. Her artwork is now held in many private and public collections around the world. Her unique form of cultural expression delights all those that have the pleasure of viewing her exciting compositions.

“CUT  AND FORMED ON THE PLAINS”

From the shire of the Golden Plains in country Victoria a large rural shire west of Geelong and south of Ballarat come two wonderful artists – printmaker Vida Pearson and sculptor Lucy McEachern. A chance meeting at the annual Birregurra Arts Festival a couple of years ago has seen the pair embark on a series of exhibitions in three different states for 2011. This travelling exhibition is titled “CUT AND FORMED ON THE PLAINS” and will be on show firstly at Yering Station in the beautiful Yarra Valley of Victoria, secondly at Roma on Bungil Gallery at Roma in Queensland before finally travelling to Purple Noon Gallery at Freemans Reach in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney

Both artists are born and bred country girls and have a great belief in country life and a commitment to exhibiting outside the metro area in a bid to give those that live outside the big cities access to high quality artworks.

THE ARTISTS

Vida Pearson lives on a 5 acre bush block at Haddon west of Ballarat where she and partner Fred Ross (a specialist fine furniture craftsman) have their studios. She has been a professional artist/printmaker for over 25 years and has a well-established reputation for her vibrant hand-coloured linocuts. Much of her subject matter comes from field trips throughout Australia in search of interesting native plants and birds – but her own backyard also provides plenty of material with many birds nesting and living on her property. Rosellas, kookaburras, honeyeaters, wrens and the ever-delightful white winged choughs are all there battling it out for their own territory.

LUCY MCEACHERN

Lucy McEachern has quickly established herself as a leading sculptor of birds. Her chosen medium for this is bronze. The simplified and elegant lines of her works make them very tactile and a pleasure to behold. When not sculpting, she helps run the family property at Wingeel west of Geelong. She is often inspired when doing stock work as she rides past plantations and grasslands and is able to observe birds in their natural habitat. Annual revegetation projects have helped to increase bird life on the farm quite noticeably. She is also lucky enough to live by a creek where there is an abundance of water birds at her front door to observe. Whether it is a finch that darts from post to post, a brolga that dances with its mate or a wedge tailed eagle that glides in the thermals high above there is a never ending supply of subject matter for her to work with.

Both artists have had many successes and accolades. Vida’s most recent prize being the Presidents’ Award from the Wildlife Artists Society of Australasia and Lucy’s selection in the prestigious “Birds in Art” exhibition at the Woodson Museum in Wisconsin USA for the second year in a row – an international art exhibition of which only 4 Australians were selected. Her sculpture was also chosen in 2010 to tour the US  in for 12 months with other selected entrants.

Both artists feel it an absolute privilege to be able to combine their passion for art with living in the country.

” Compositions are derived from shapes, structures and textures left in the ever-changing wake of time and progression, as I attempt to make a sense of place in all my imagery. My passion for drawing and painting has developed from a deep connection to the land and nature. Country towns with old world charm appeal to me as subjects. I sketch the local scenery in order to capture the unique history and character of the town. Old buildings have always held a fascination for me, tending to tantalize the senses with a thousand untold stories. I attempt to capture the essence of this in my works”.

Lyn grew up on a farm on the outskirts of Sydney, near Kenthurst, where the bush landscape  inherently developed her deep connection to the land and nature.  While Lynne spent many years there, she has recently moved to Coffs Harbour.  Lynne still exhibits in Sydney and comes back to visit quite often.

John Cheeseman, the Director of Mosman Art Gallery will officially open the exhibition at 6.00pm on Saturday 16th April. You are invited to join us and meet Lynne and view her wonderful paintings and drawings of the Australian landscape.

Carl’s paintings are reminiscent of a romantic period in art when artists like Turner and Constable expressed emotion and a stylistic range of landscape painting to  heightened sensory awareness.  Carl’s art is expressive, imaginative and exaggerated – a refuge from the social struggles of contemporary life. His work today celebrates a creative individuality, where his compelling visual landscapes are simply beautiful and fanciful, not necessarily meaningful, purposeful or functional. He responds sensitively to the difficult, social and political world in which we all live, and takes us back to an imaginative world of beauty, emotion and romanticism.

After a break from full time painting, where he sold very successfully through Barry Stern Galleries, Paddington in the 1980s and 1990s, Carl is re-emerging into the art scene where his imagination and painting technique continue to expand, as he works on paintings that commemorate the modern era, integrating the beauty of architecture, nature and contemporary scenes.

His work is more than ever still distinguished by his penchant for atmospheric detail and tubulent skies, disturbed by the relative calm of his subject matter. Stringfellow’s paintings generate a mood that is both evocative and ephemoral, forcing the viewer to contemplate the aura of the landscape and its visual splendour.

606 Terrace Rd, Freemans Reach

(02) 4579 6579

Closed Tuesdays