2004_2005

In 2004 I went to stay at Hill End for a month at Haeflingers Cottage, it was my first art residency and it was a most exciting time. Inspired by the explosion of the colour of nature, the red of the soil and it's ravaged marks from the gold mining, the overwhelming sense of history and past lives, I went on many walks documenting my journeys. The shadows in my abstracted rose petals became my white line, my mapping mark, the intense colours reflecting my emotions and thoughts. 

In my Residency application I wrote. ‘At Hill End I would especially like to further study the void, the space behind dreams, by contemplating the marks on the landscape around Hill End left by the miners. These paintings would aim to reflect the unique energy, cultural history of Hill End and explore the mythology of our attachment to the land.’ 

Professionally as an artist this residency had a profound effect on my development as an artist. While I had spent a week painting large chunks of my New Paining show in a tiny room overlooking a rock tidal pool at Bendalong on the South Coast during a holiday. To spend a month totally immersed in the landscape, drawing and painting in the Haeflinger studio shifted how I made art and I would repeat this into the future. As a basically self taught artist time and studio poor I had spent years with two small children making art at night and on the weekend at the kitchen table. I soaked up the luxury of a residency studio and the space and time to dream. 

Bathurst Regional Gallery Director Richard Perram came and spent time at my studio during the residency. I was privileged to be selected by him for a solo show at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery from the works inspired by the residency. The title of the show was White Lines and ran alongside coincide the larger Bathurst Gallery travelling show 'Fireworks' tracing the incendiary in Australian Art, curated by Gavin Wilson.

White Lines would show at SPAN Galleries in Melbourne. As well as on the Ground Floor Gallery at Mary Place Gallery in Paddington. On the First Floor International Australian artist would Justine Cooper premiered her series of large format photographs/videos Saved from Science. Taken her year as first artist-in-residence in the storage areas of the American Museum of Natural Museum in New York City on an Australia Council Grant. These works of Justine's would then feature in the next Queensland Gallery AAPT and go into the galleries collection.