Weswal Gallery and Deva Chocolate Cafe will be closed for Easter long weekend folks. Wishing all of our supporters a wonderful holiday, and we look forward to seeing you next week x

Predominantly working with oil paint on canvas, I see my paintings as illusory abstract landscapes where the landscape emerges as an imagined place, or the in-between space that connects memory and place, rather than representing somewhere specific. Through layers of various marks: squiggly lines, shapes, broad brush strokes, and veils of paint I hope to build an image that cannot be understood in a simple glance. The various paint marks aren’t representative of anything in particular. Instead, like points on a map they guide toward the memory of a place and will resonate differently for each person that engages with my paintings. 
 
I grew up in the county surrounded by a lot of open space. As an adult I have lived in Melbourne and whilst loving the urban environment I am always seeking to find that feeling of space I had around me in my childhood. Through my paintings I am trying to recreate that feeling of space for myself and hopefully for others too. I am also trying to create a feeling of calm when I look at my work.  I feel that life is chaos so I want my paintings be a counterpoint to that.  My hope is that others can find a moment of quiet and space to breathe when they are viewing my artwork.

Amber Hearn and Katie Harvey / Looking Forward, Looking Back

‘Looking Forward, Looking Back’ surveys reflections, perception and memories of internal and external landscapes experienced by artists Amber Hearn and Katie Harvey. A visual dialogue is apparent in their paintings, exploring notions of architectural and agricultural integrations into the environment through colour, light and abstraction.

Exhibition runs February 14 until March 10

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This exhibition was developed with the assistance of a Regional Arts Quick Response Grant Regional Arts Australia

‘Hey! Thats My Guitar’ is an ode to the Guitar Shaped World exhibitions originally created by Reg Lynch and Michael Rolfe for Tamworth Regional Gallery.

We will be showing kitsch, fun and guitar themed artworks from multiple artists across multiple mediums. We will also be borrowing a work from the Tamworth Regional Gallery collection for the show.

‘Hey! Thats My Guitar’ is our contribution to the reknown Tamworth Country Music Festival.

Weswal Gallery will be closed for Christmas break from Saturday 23 December and will reopen on 17th January 2024.

Any Stockroom purchases made during this time will be shipped after the gallery reopens.

We want to wish all of our supporters a wonderful, safe and restful holiday season.

See you in 2024!

Marie Larkin returns to Weswal with‘Landmarks’ an exhibition that explores the intersection of the material landscape, and the world of memory and emotion that exists within us all.

These works are defined by tactile, painstakingly rendered surfaces that reference natural elements, yet remain elusively abstract.

‘Landmarks’ will be our final exhibition of 2023.

Jamie-Lee Garner is an interdisciplinary Artist that lives and works in the Northern Tablelands, on Ngarabal country in NSW, Australia. She received her BA in Architecture from the University of Sydney in 2018. In her arts practice Jamie-Lee works with ceramics, painting and film photography. Through all her works she explores the relationship between our inner world and our external reality, dealing mostly with the energetic integration or dissonance of our memories. 

Utilising upcycled textiles and an exploratory ceramics process Jamie-Lee is focused on optimising sustainability and creative expression. She plays with the senses through materiality and form, building sandy raku clay vessels and meticulously wrapping them in offcuts from vintage bath towels that evoke a sense of nostalgia. 

Each towel is individually sourced from a range of interesting characters across Australia and each of these towels has had a journey all its own. The towels are then handmade into one-of-a-kind hats at Sydney based fashion label Re/lax Remade, after which the colourful offcuts are diverted from landfill and into Jamie-Lee's hands, ready for the alchemy of the ceramics studio. 

"Through the process of warmly wrapping these stone like vessels I am reminded of the true expanse of human imagination and collaboration across time and mediums. This fabric has travelled across decades, been held in many hands, loved in many homes and is now living anew. These nostalgic patterns have a third chance at life and it is something quite special to know that many artisans have worked with them along the way."

Goulburn based artist Lynne Flemons work embodies a sense of play as she exposes interactions between colour, pattern and movement in the landscape.

Lynne received a Master of Philosophy (Arts & Social Sciences), from Australian National University, Canberra in 2015. She has exhibited regularly for over 20 years, has been nominated for numerous awards and artists residencies, and has work held is corporate and private collections in Australia and Europe. She is a Fellow of Ballinglen Art Foundation, Co Mayo, Ireland, and has been AIR at Serlachius Museum in Finland, among others.

Misty Trees and Mirror Lakes is Lynnes second solo exhibition at Weswal Gallery

Rachel Carroll has been a practicing artist for over 20 years. An expressionist and an environmentalist painter Rachel prefers to paint about locations that are surviving rather than focus on an areas demise.

She has an MFA from UNSW , COFA and a has recently become a member of the Royal Art Society. In 2023 Rachel became a member of the Australian Watercolour Institute.

Most recently Rachel has been a finalist in the Mount Eyre Art Prize, the Hawksbury Art Prize, and the Whitewall Project Space – Into the Light Art Prize.

This exhibition features a series of landscapes refercning the artists travels and memories of the Megalong Valley and Hill End areas of NSW, and will be showing in the Stockroom Gallery

Much adored Gunnedah artist Maree Kelly returns to Weswal Gallery with her solo exhibition, The Pilliga.

As the title suggests, Maree has produced a body of work referencing the subtle yet distinct beauty of the Pilliga Forest, an area of great ecological and cultural value that faces significant threats from CSG exploration.

This exhibition highlights the rare and unassuming beauty of this ancient forest.

Local favorite Liz Priestley returns to Weswal with a mini solo release in our Stockroom Gallery.

Liz Priestley is a regional artist living and working in the small village of Manilla, in northern NSW. Encaustic is her chosen medium. Liz’s work is best described as a combined interpretation of both the immediate physical landscape, and that of the internal landscape. It is an exploration of the subject, viewed via a nostalgic lens.

 “Memory and an emotional connection to place, are the elements I try to bring together in my work.Our earliest memories are what fascinates me. I strive towards pinpointing the connection between our first impressions of our environment, and its emotional corollary within our future. Landscape is our conduit for the spiritual, this has been illustrated across cultures and generations. By using encaustic, I am alternately layering, carving and scraping out an image. There is a revelation in the work as it progresses, and its final form. This process is a physical representation of searching those layers of memory. The resulting image is the vehicle in which the viewer resonates with their own epiphany of personal, binding memories”

Her choice of encaustic (wax) as a medium in the creative process is for both its architectural and reductive qualities, allowing for a narrative to build through the layers which can then also be selectively revealed by carving, scraping and melting. “I began using encaustic with oils as merely a vehicle to add texture and layering to my work, about six years ago. Over time however, as I became comfortable with the medium and I realised its amazing properties and the extent of its flexibility; I started to use it as the base medium for all my work. Encaustic has a unique combination of characteristics which I love: It hardens immediately so there’s no drying time, it is semi-transparent and so layering can bring out lovely images, and it can be sculpted into. Not to mention that you can transfer images onto it, polish the surface, collage onto it and use a multitude of other mediums with it!”

A group exhibition that amplifies and exposes the subtle colours of the New England landscape. Curated by Kate Hofman, Director Weswal Gallery

Featuring Gemma KING (Walcha, printmaking) Paula JENKINS (Walcha, painting) and Rita WINIGER (Armidale, painting). 

A ceramicist and a painter come together in ‘Between the Lines’. A friendship forged in mutual admiration and support for each others creative practice is the foundation for this show featuring Newcastle based duo, Elizabeth Mead and Zoë Tjanavaras.

Ceramic artist Zoë Tjanavaras creates vessels that are organic, tactile and delightfully peculiar! She was the winner of the Ceramics section in the 2020 Muswellbrook Art Prize.

Liz Mead paints structural and expressive, light filled Australian landscapes. She was a finalist in the 2022 Muswellbrook Art Prize and the Gosford Art Prize 2021.

Opening Event will be held on Saturday 12 August @5pm

Sonia Martignon’s art practice is based in and inspired by the northern territory. Her imagery is driven by an intense curiosity with nature, landscape and mythology and her distinctive colour palette echoes the hues found in this unique landscape. She works on hand cut wood and records ideas using the mediums of acrylic, graphite and pyrography.

Into the Wild is her inaugural solo exhibition

Weswal Gallery’s annual exhibition of Botanical and Still Life art

Our incredible 2023 line up features

Jessica ALEXANDER

Lisa HOELZL Ceramics

Belinda JEANES

Kirsty McINTYRE

Marilou PALAZON

Jane Frances TANNOCK

Sophie WITTER

Welcoming Scott McDougall in his debut showing at Weswal Gallery, Embrace.

A contemporary realist painter with an extensive exhibition history, Scott has produced a body of work that references the stunning New England High Country, from Tenterfield through to Armidale. Exquisitely detailed, these paintings capture the vastness and luminous light experienced in ‘Big Sky Country’.

Express your interest in this exhibition by emailing the gallery at info@weswalgallery.com.au

Armidale based emerging artist Janna Hayes presents her debut mini solo exhibition in the Stockroom Gallery. Her work consists of large, expressive landscape and abstract pieces that examine the way we turn to nature for solace, grounding and rejuvenation.

Painted primarily in bitumen and oil paint on paper, Janna’s work reflects a deeply personal journey of moving through grief in a foreign landscape and learning to challenge one’s own narrative in order to find beauty and connection in the unfamiliar.

Anna Henderson presents a series of hand built Raku and smoke fired ceramic vessels and mixed media paintings in her solo exhibition, Chasing Shadows.

A long time Weswal collaborator, Anna’s work is much admired for its sense of intrigue and her unique technical approach to the medium. Her wall works reflect her ceramic practice and are formed using plaster upon board which is etched into, burnished and texturised.

“I am exploring the positioning of classic English gardens in the major tourist area that we live in (Olinda Victoria). It has always struck me as a very strange phenomenon that visitors flock up here to visit gardens devoted to European flora when another couple of steps will take you to a number of national parks with the most stunning fern gullies and largest flowering eucalypts in the world. A clash of English froth against brilliant native flora using my large collection of vintage English fabrics and Vintage Australian souvenir cloths.”

Alicia Cornwell on ‘Souvenir’

Alicia is a full time artist specialising in oils of Still Life. Working from her studio in Olinda on top of Mount Dandenong just outside Melbourne, she is inspired by her collection of Vintage and Antique fabrics she has collected during her 25 years as a Vintage Merchant for interior design in her previous career.

 Alicia completed her Bachelor of Fine Art degree in 1985 with a Diploma of Education tacked on after that and has been working creatively since.

 Alicia is the proud WINNER of the Still Life Category for Art Lovers Australia Art Prize 2022 AND Bluethumb Art Prize in 2021. She has also been a finalist in Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award (Gallery Hang) and the Omnia Art Prize 2021 among others

Weswal Gallery will be closed for the 2023 Easter Long Weekend, and will reopen to our normal hours of trade on 9.30am Wednesday 12 April.

Wishing all our supporters a safe and wonderful holiday, Kate x

Kate Stehr is a trained sculptor with a Masters of Philosophy in Creative Arts Research, an Advanced Diploma of Fine Arts, and Bachelor of Fine Arts (Honours). Her two key artistic pursuits are sculpture and collage, with each practice different and yet informing the other.

“My practice is centred on an interaction and observation of the Australian landscape, focussing on the unique character and grandeur of this subject matter. My works incorporate a range of mark making techniques to negotiate experiences of my surroundings, using elements of painting, printmaking and drawing. I continue to draw inspiration from my experiences of growing up in regional New South Wales, finding the familiar colours and shapes a recurring theme throughout my practice. 

I find the Australian landscape to be unique in appearance and character. More recently, I was able to spend time in a new part of the Australian landscape; Tasmania. This is a land of cooler weather and colours; shades and shapes that are less familiar, yet not completely foreign. Many of these works are inspired by my experience there, as I observed a new landscape, guided by the sky above and earth beneath.”

Rebekah Lukins on ‘And We Knew the Sky’

Rebekah Lukins is a artist and arts educator based in Tamworth NSW, she attend the College of Fine Arts at UNSW from 2014 - 2018.

Tori Delany is an artist living and working in Mparntwe (Alice Springs, NT) who makes original abstract landscape paintings inspired by the Australian landscape. Tori graduated from the University of South Australia with a Bachelor of Visual Arts, with a specialisation in Painting in 2015. She went on to pursue graduate studies in Art History before returning to her art practice, which is influenced by her master’s research into female landscape painters and colonisation.

Her work aims to explore her connection to the landscape in a sensitive and emotive, but also fun and playful way.

Having recently moved from Adelaide, where she grew up, to Alice Springs, her work is experiencing a sense of evolution which reflects the stark difference in the landscape. While the iconography does not always strictly reflect the native flora of an area, the mood and atmosphere is subtly different, and the size of the works is gradually increasing to reflect the vast, never ending feeling of the desert.

Sophie Honess is a textile artist, specialising in weaving, embroidery, tufting, and latch
- hook techniques. She creates works which respond to her immediate environment of Gomeroi country.
She is also a weaver with Yinarr Maramali, a first-nations business who practice and teach cultural Gomeroi weaving in the local community.

Emily’s Vases is a series of still life works based around Sophie’s sisters extensive collection of West German Pottery.

WESWAL WILL BE CLOSED FROM 3PM FRIDAY 23 DECEMBER 2022 , REOPENING WEDNESDAY 11 JANUARY 2023

WE WANT TO WISH ALL OF OUR SUPPORTERS A BIG THANK YOU AND A HAPPY, RESTFUL HOLIDAY . WE HAVE ANOTHER FULL AND EXCITING YEAR OF EXHIBITIONS PLANNED FOR 2023, SO WE LOOK FORWARD TO WELCOMING YOU THEN

KATE X

Saturday December 10 @5pm we will be celebrating the opening of Charmaine Pike’s solo exhibition, Hippocampus.

This will be our last exhibition and our last event for 2022, so please bring a friend and join us to celcbrate.

Charmaine has produced a series of new paintings and will also be offering a small selection of gorgeous early career drawings

Hippocampus runs from 7 until 23 December. Please contact the gallery if you are interested in a advance preview. Charmaine Pike is represented by Defiance Gallery in Sydney

Pictured: Charmaine Pike, ‘Hide and Seek’ acrylic on board, 660Hx 635W, framed.

A beach themed group exhibition featuring work from Mitch ENGLISH, Adam GALIC, Nick HOLLO and Rachel READING.