Gallery Bodalla opens for the spring/summer season with a beautiful body of work featuring the Tuross river at Countegany by Stuart Whitelaw, passionate paintings of sea and land by Bela Ivanyi, and intriguing still life by Michael Edwards .
Local legend, Stuart Whitelaw’s body of work, The Tuross at Countegany, was inspired by a small property that has a frontage onto the Tuross River about 5km upstream of the Tuross Falls. It is located in a small region called Countegany.
“The dominant landscape feature of outcropping granite gives a wonderful structure to the river and surrounding bush. The ribbon gums trail their bark to form piles of linear mulch around their trunks. Trout and platypus compete to make ripples in the evening pools, and the elevation of around one thousand metres ensures that alpine temperatures can descend at any time,” Stuart said.
Connection with landscape has always been at the core of Stuart’s work. This connection is evident in the warmth, poetry and changing light that Stuart has transcribed into these beautiful and strong works.
Bela Ivanyi, who lives on the central coast, works spontaneously, with a wonderful understanding of shape and light, to produce works that reveal his passionate nature and love of the Australian landscape. Bela’s expressive and lively paintings on canvas and paper feature the vibrant colours of the landscape around Alice Springs, along with some cooler works of the wetland at Kianga and the ocean at Depot Beach.
They are joined by Canberra based artist Michael Edwards. Michael’s intriguing paintings specialise in the genre of still life painting, focusing on objects as symbols of aspects of our contemporary way of living. Many of his paintings examine the relationship between objects and current economic conditions. Michael has been exploring and painting the still life since graduating from the Australian National University’s School of Art in 2006.
Stuart Whitelaw, Bela Ivanyi, Michael Edwards will be at Gallery Bodalla from 21 September through to 29 October
Gallery Bodalla is open Thursday to Sunday 10.30am-4pm, in the heritage post office, 66a Princes Hwy, Bodalla. 0421 238 174 www.gallerybodalla.com.au
For further information: Valerie Faber gallerybodalla@gmail.com M 0421 238 174
