Show Notes
Belinda has been in lots of prizes and has lots of experience as an exhibiting artistShe started early and has always loved artShe was always ‘holding a pencil’ and loved art in high school. Had a turbulent few years and planned to do Graphic Design, ended up getting into an Art degree and stayed doing that and grew from thereShe did a desktop publishing course and started in a junior designer jobFull scholarship at Julian Ashton art schoolEntered Mossman Youth Art Prize and won the drawing section one year and the painting section the next yearBelinda had a job and travel planned so ended up doing all threeJulian Ashton was very technical and structuredWent backpacking around Europe with an artist friend – they would do a drawing every day, sitting around drinking beer and drawing and all on a shoestringNow is in more landscapes but was more interested in the human form before travellingMost landscape work now is strongly Australian – there’s not so much travel these days with two kids and design business.Belinda finds the Australian landscape infinitely fascinating and will usually take a trip to a place, sketch, take photos and then surrounds herself with little bits of information all around her in the studio and makes her own compositionThe painting becomes it’s own composition – some are more like the actual view than othersShe doesn’t know how it will end up until it’s doneThe painting is a work in itself and not necessarily the landscape you remember – it’s driven by other things like composition, the colours, how it’s all brought together and you make decisions on the wayFelicity agrees there’s a point where the painting begins to speak back to youBelinda has been a finalist in a lot of big name prizes – some are expensive and time consuming to enterFelicity finds it takes a lot of planning and preparation and it’s frustrating that you can’t find all the information in one placeBelinda gets notified from Art Almanac, social media, emails but it all adds to the confusionSome days you feel like you’re doing more admin than workBiggest challenge is the juggle – all the things I need to do for the weekThe phone always rings as soon as you’ve gotten past the procrastination and actually put paint on a brushLikes routine and deadlines and work better with structure but don’t so much any moreImpossible to schedule in exact times – my design work had to take priority – it was the incomeGoing to work towards having more routine now that she’s past some family strugglesWhen things aren’t going well with your painting you get off track and demotivatedIt’s nice to be in silence sometimes… but it’s easy to slip into yourselfMusic is the best thing to get me inspired again and warms up the spaceA lot of artists are selling through social media but I don’t really put mine out there until I have a whole body of work and then I sell out at an exhibitionYou lose a hefty chunk by selling via galleries with commissionsBelinda came up with the idea for her latest exhibition, which Felicity was part of, called A Social Landscape at Dank Street Galleries in Waterloo, from an admiration of other people’s works on social mediaYou tend to gravitate to people who work in a similar way to yourselfA lot of the artists I was admiring weren’t represented and I couldn’t work out whyNever met any of the artists in person – the first time will be during bump inSometimes you don’t have a lot of contact with other artists in person so I thought it would be great to connectDepot Gallery at #2 Dank Street, Waterloo Sydney – it’s changing but a fantastic gallery space – only about 3-4 left open nowTop Tip: You’ve got so much time and opportunities… apply for everything when you’re in the ‘Emerging Artist’ – put yourself out thereChoose what you want people to see on social media and how you group what people do and don’t want to seeMake contact with galleries from the start, even though it can feel intimidatingIt’s off-putting to gallery owners to be forced into showsIt’s more difficult to organically grow a relationship when you don’t live in the big centres and that can hinder thingsIf your art is good enough and you’re doing your background work, you will get noticedThe post 01: Belinda Street appeared first on Felicity O'Connor.
