Winner, Henry Bartlett Memorial People’s Choice Award
Highly Commended
Tattersall’s Landscape Art Prize 2018
Most days I go to dog park, early, with Zozo.
In winter it is quite dark, the sun doesn’t hit the grass until late morning.
I love the dogs, the people, and the trees – equally I think.
Oil on linen, 83 x 137cm
Finalist, Lyn McCrae Memorial Drawing Prize, Noosa Regional Gallery 2018
Maria and her husband constructed rooms under the house, the chook shed, an outside oven and climbing frames for the beans and other vegetables. Water was diverted from the roof into garbage bins and Maria uses a saucepan tied to a broom handle to distribute water to the plants. Surrounded by new development, Maria’s house and garden are unlikely to survive the increasing pressure for higher density living.
Charcoal, pastel on Arches paper, 67 x 108cm
With flashes of silver and a flourish of green, the wind swept through the banksias on Diggers Headland.
Charcoal, pastel on Arches paper, 59 x 96cm
Winner
Andrew Fisher Portrait Prize, Gympie Regional Gallery, 2018
Several years ago a series of very difficult events unfolded culminating in my getting a serious health issue which meant that I couldn’t work, lost my business, my clients. Long story short, new drug, health restored. I started drawing gardens rather than buildings. I’m “Back from Black” and in Maria’s Garden !
Oil on linen, 60 x 100cm
Finalist, Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing 2018
It is at the clothesline that Maria’s garden combines practicality and decoration in an uniquely Australian way. The Hill’s Hoist is ringed by geraniums and mown grass, with an outer ring of pot plants and flowers, all grown from ‘cuts’.
Pastel, charcoal on Arches paper, 75 x 109 cm
Kedumba Drawing Award, 2017
Orange Regional Gallery (acquired)
This is the sixth drawing of Maria’s garden. The beans cover every frame and trellis. The space is closed in, a vigorous green wonderland, that left unchecked, could take over the house.
Pastel, charcoal on Arches paper, 56 x 90cm
Winner, Drawing from Nature
ArchiGraphicsArts Competition of Architectural Drawings, Moscow, 2017
I felt it was very important to show the detail, because much of Maria’s philosophy “waste not, want not” is in those details. Maria has worked hard all her life since she arrived here at 14 years of age from a war torn Italy where she and her family often did not have enough to eat. Through her hard work and thrift, her garden has supplied her family with food. Nothing is ever wasted. The structural materials that make up her climbing frames, sheds and tools have been recycled from elsewhere. Plants come from cuttings and seeds she has saved. Water is collected from the roof, directed into rubbish bins and ladled out with a saucepan tied to a broomstick.
Charcoal, pastel on Arches paper, 45 x 72cm
Finalist, Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing 2017
It had been several months since I had first sketched in my neighbour Maria’s garden and I found it overtaken by the beans that now covered every frame and trellis. The space was more closed in, rooms of green with a central corridor, and it feels like those beans could take over the house, even the world. We had a harvest moon at this time, and again the garden was transformed by the intensity of the light of a super-moon, drained of colour but with a sharp clarity of detail and shadow.
Charcoal, pastel on Arches paper, 68 x 108cm
Finalist, Elaine Birmingham National Watercolour Prize 2017
I am interested in the remnant spaces and landscape between and behind buildings, and buildings that are unassuming, which may not even register with passers by. Are these places used and familiar to people or are they unnoticed, even abandoned? On a pre dawn walk I saw this boarding house – the windows lit like jewels.
Watercolour 46 x 92cm
JaneGrealyArtist 