Quick Shot – Group Show | July 19th – August 2nd [2015]

25 Jun Quick Shot – Group Show | July 19th – August 2nd [2015]

Quick Shot

Group Exhibition by Leonie Robison, Paul Hattaway and Adrienne Watson

19th July – 2nd August 2015

Opening night: Thursday 23rd July 6-8pm

A quick injection of coffee to fire up the senses. A jolt of caffeine to quicken the pulse. This is the secret to a masterpiece say friends Leonie Robison, Paul Hattaway, and Adrienne Watson. The three have been drawing and making art together for a number of years and even though they have very different styles of working, they find that they complement each other.

The urgency of producing an exhibition with a few weeks notice, a quick response after a delicious, freshly brewed shot of warm, fragrant coffee, and the three are hard at work.

Leonie works in a variety of media, enjoying the different challenges and rewards offered by each. Her continual experimentation with materials and techniques keeps her work fresh and immediate. Her art practice is driven by a need to express her response to what she sees around her. This can take a myriad of forms, from a traditional still life to a conceptual assemblage of found objects. Her main focus is on issues of political or social importance.

Paul moves between media, mainly in the fields of sculpture and painting. His work is based on the principles of drawing so when working with different media he feels he is just drawing in a different way, with different materials. His work ranges from addressing serious political issues, to quirky and light-hearted pieces. A series of roosters and hens sits in juxtaposition to the threatening figure of an oversized priest.

Adrienne’s focus is photography. She says she came upon art by accident and continues to discover the joys, and frustrations, of creativity. She has extensively explored alternative forms of producing photographic images, such as cyanotype, and is currently honing her skills as a carver of vegetables, which she then assembles into elaborate still- life floral arrangements to photograph.

Quick Shot brings together a compilation of varied work by three talented North Shore artists that is guaranteed to bring warmth to a cold winter’s day.

Leonie Robison – Artist’s Statement

My work in “The Coffee Effect” is the result of many drawing sessions in the congenial company of my fellow coffee lovers. Happy chessmen, enticing bowls of fruit, coffee cups with their hidden promise, all held together with a smudge of charcoal and a splash of ink.

My art practice is driven by my need to express my response to what I see around me. This can take a myriad of forms, from a traditional still life to a conceptual assemblage of found objects. My main focus is on issues of political or social importance, especially as they impact on women.

Sometimes though, its good to forget about all the suffering in the world and just sit and draw, to focus and become totally involved in the process, to draw just for the sake of drawing. I like to draw expressively to capture the innate essence of an object rather than tortuously render an exact copy.

I enjoy working in a variety of media as each has its own challenges and rewards, and continual experimentation with materials and techniques keeps my work fresh and immediate. Most of my current work is painting and assemblages of “found” objects and other materials, with weekly drawing thrown into the mix.

Paul Hattaway – Artist Statement

Drawing is an important element of most visual art.  It is a way of exploring ideas, and of experimenting with different materials and techniques, while practicing the mental and physical skills needed for visual art of many kinds.

While drawing is usually thought of in this more prosaic way, as part of a process for producing other artwork, it can be an end in itself.  Drawings have been collected as objects of interest and beauty in their own right for centuries (the Medici family collected drawings at least as early as the time of Lorenzo il Magnifico, in the second half of the fifteenth century).

Our drawing group has been meeting most weeks for several years, the focus on our drawing only interrupted by coffee.  While we have done some life drawing, most of our sessions have involved studying still life compositions (produce, artefacts, household objects).  It has been an interesting journey, and occasionally a drawing will proclaim itself as worthy enough to be viewed by others.  Most of the work you see in our exhibition was produced at our drawing sessions.

Adrienne Watson – Artist’s Statement

I came upon art by accident and discovered the joys (and frustrations) of creativity: making, experimenting, doing and finding what works for me and what doesn’t work for me.

I enjoy all forms of art. My preference is currently for photography, mainly alternative types of photography such as the Cyanotype, a process resulting in a cyan-blue print.

A wide range of materials can be used to provide the photogram image. In fact anything from nature, transparencies of photographic images, man-made materials, anything especially those things which can be flattened to a reasonable degree can be used.  Seaweed has provided me with the great material with which to play. It gives shape, tones, colours, patterns, which I love to incorporate in my images. I have also found that by using wet seaweed I have been able to manipulate the final images for different effects to a much greater extent than when using other materials.

When the work is going well it is very exciting and I feel pushed to keep going along the same track initiating extension of ideas or to use the same techniques but change the materials and then see what happens. Experimenting is a lot of the fun.