Back on the Painting Trail

In the midst of painting two commissions, which is taking up most of my studio time, the final Collaboration of Maleny Artists (yup, COMA) show for the year suddenly appeared on the radar.

Organiser and gallery owner Ken Munsie devised a fascinating theme for this show. Each artist has been allotted a square of the ordnance map around the Maleny area, and asked to create a square artwork based on the little piece of geography. I picked a square adjoining the main road from Landsborough into town, and went to the site for an afternoon of sketching the layout, checking out the landscape and vegetation, and taking copious reference photos. Back in the studio, I created "The Summer Visitor" from all the collected information, working quickly in acrylics, overlaying areas of glazed and layered colours. When the image had come together, I varnished it with a high gloss combination of stand oil, damar varnish and Liquin. 

The show can be seen from Wednesday 9 December at Maleny Artworks, 50 Maple Street, Maleny, and there is an official opening there on Saturday afternoon.