Terrain

Maria’s Garden, Shed

| janegrealy

Winner,  Drawing from Nature

ArchiGraphicsArts Competition of Architectural Drawings, Moscow, 2017

maria's garden, shed-a4

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

Maria’s Garden, Harvest Moon

| janegrealy

Finalist,  Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing 2017

maria's garden, harvest moon - a4

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

Boarding House, New Farm

| janegrealy

Finalist, Elaine Birmingham National Watercolour Prize 2017

grealy_jane_boarding house

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

Maria’s Garden, From the Back

| janegrealy

Winner People’s Choice Award

JADA ( Jacaranda  Acquisitive Drawing Award)

Grafton Regional Gallery, NSW

“Maria’s Garden, From The Back” recently won the Art Spectrum People’s  Choice Award and was acquired by the Grafton Regional Gallery. “This detailed drawing won the popularity stakes hands down. Any time you were in the gallery when the 2016 JADA was on display there are visitors standing in front of this drawing of the artist’s neighbour’s garden” Jude McBean, Grafton Regional Gallery Director.

2_j_grealy_marias-garden-from-the-backThe fourth in this series, “Maria’s Garden, From the Back” is of my neighbour’s garden, with its history of Maria’s long marriage, her love of gardening and Italian post war migration in our inner city suburb of New Farm in Brisbane.

The 2016 Jacaranda Acquisitive Drawing Award has gone to Caboolture Regional Gallery for the first of its eight venue tour. The winner and four acquisitions along with the 41 finalists are set to tour until August 2018. After Caboolture Regional Art Gallery the 2016 JADA goes to University of the Sunshine Coast Gallery followed by Bundaberg Regional Art Gallery, Gympie Regional Gallery, Redland Art Gallery, Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery, Warwick Art Gallery and the New England Regional Art Museum, Armidale.

MOONLIGHT TRAMPOLINE

| janegrealy

Winner  – Significant  2D Work

Stanthorpe Art Festival

Judges Ron Ramsey and Kyla McFarlane’s comments

“This work on paper displays the artist’s great skill at depicting a scene that is in an informal and casual setting, transformed into a stage of expectation and mystery. The artist has challenged themselves by depicting the scene not in daylight, but by the more gentle light of the moon. The composition’s central focus is not historic, monumental or grandiose, but rather a simple piece of children’s play equipment, the quintessential backyard trampoline.”

Moonlight Trampoline 1200As an inner suburb of Brisbane with pressure for higher density living, New Farm is bustling with construction work for new developments and renovations. Inevitably, the demographic profile of our neighbourhood is shifting. I pass this backyard down a rarely used laneway often and enjoy the quiet view a neglected house and backyard. The weeds grow to waist height and the trampoline looks broken. This abandoned landscape must be familiar to some, perhaps home to remnant wildlife, and I wonder for how much longer.

Real estate advertising brochures feature glamorous high chroma illustrations of new units and houses. By setting this landscape under moonlight, the color has seeped away, and all is still and unchanging.

Maria’s Garden, Path

| janegrealy

Stanthorpe Art Prize

Two of my works, “Maria’s Garden, Path” and “Moonlight Trampoline” have been selected as finalists for this year’s Stanthorpe Art Prize. With $33,000 in awards, more than 1400 images were submitted from 507 artists from Australia and overseas. This exhibition is the highlight of the Stanthorpe Art Festival  which runs from 3rd June to 17th July.

Maria's Garden,Path 1200

The second in this series, “Maria’s Garden, Path” is of my neighbour’s garden, with its history of Maria’s long marriage and Italian post war migration.

Maria’s Garden

| janegrealy

Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing

My work “Maria’s Garden” has been selected as a finalist in this years Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing. The Adelaide Perry Prize for drawing is a $25,000 acquisitive art award and this year attracted over 600 entries.

The exhibition opened in Sydney on 26th February when the winner Andrew Browne was announced – for a beautiful and thought provoking work.

Maria's Garden_1200

Standing on my toes at our back fence, I sometimes chat with my neighbour Maria. I love her garden, the chaos at the back, the organized garden beds, and the bright red geraniums that ring her clothesline. Maria and her husband came from Italy after the war and with many other European migrants, they settled in our inner city suburb New Farm. Maria is over eighty now and finds the garden harder to maintain since her husband died a year ago. I have learned more about her and her garden since she has allowed me to sit and sketch. The possums are a problem and plastic bags over ripening vegetables are her first line of defence.

There is so much to draw, so much evidence of her and her husband’s life over the last sixty years.

New Farm Squared

| janegrealy

Artists: Andrea Higgins and Jane Grealy

Sunday 6th September – Sunday 4th October, 2015

“Evocative artworks by two New Farm residents offer different insights into the Brisbane suburb, their works coming together to help us value the ‘overlooked extraordinariness of the ordinary’“.  Sheona Thompson, Houses, Issue 108 Feb 2016.

The images following are of Jane’s work.

1 James St_1200

“James Street” acrylic on board, 40 x 80 cm

2014 Observational Juror’s Award -Thom Payne, Architecture in Perspective 30, American Society of Architectural Illustrators

 

2 Brunswick St Carpark_1200

“Brunswick Street Carpark” acrylic on board, 40 x 80 cm

For this exhibition I am painting and drawing subjects of my choice – the less examined architectural fabric and detail of New Farm where I have lived for thirty years. 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?

 

Bowman_ ND morning

“Bowman Lane” watercolour, 28 x 14 cm    “Morning Next Door” watercolour, 28 x 14cm

 

3 Next Door, study_1200

“Next Door” watercolour, 14 x 28cm

2013 Award of Excellence, Architecture in Perspective 29, American Society of Architectural Illustrators

I live next door to a large block of flats that overlooks our house. The screening landscape between us has gone and our windows, balconies and verandas face each other. It seems to me both sides employ a discretion reminiscent to the one David Malouf describes of living in Queenslanders – that of “not seeing and not hearing”. Our discretion is not to look directly at each other, and to only occasionally acknowledge each other’s presence, to ignore outbursts, indiscretions. On long walks home from school as a child, I enjoyed looking at houses, assessing which was the most attractive, looking at the windows for signs of how those inside lived. Many of the paintings in this exhibition are views from my home looking out.

 

WElsby _ Other side

“Welsby Street” watercolour, 28 x 14 cm        “Other Side” watercolour, 28 x 14cm

 

5 Night Next Door, study-1200

“Night Next Door” watercolour, 14 x 28cm