Words by Liz Bond, via This Magnificent Life
This week we took to the backroads, byways and beaches of Noosa to meet some of the artists opening their workspaces for Noosa Open Studios Art Trail 2022.
From 1 - 9 October, Noosa Open Studios Art Trail 2022 brings together 117 artists on 5 art trails across 9 days. Now that the artists have put out the welcome mat, the general public can meet artists and view their work in their usually private domains – their studios.
The free event showcases the diverse and vibrant Noosa visual art scene giving art lovers the chance to explore the coast, the hinterland, and the villages that make up Noosa to discover celebrated and emerging artists.
While the Noosa region is renowned across the globe for endless stretches of white sand beaches, the Noosa Open Studios Art Trail allows visitors and locals to discover dozens of ceramicists, sculptors, painters, mixed-media and 3-D artists that call magnificent Noosa home.
Now in its seventh year, Wallace House at 1 Wallace Drive Noosaville remains the Noosa Open Studios Hub. Volunteers will aid art lovers in planning their trail journeys, and artwork from each artist is on display. Pick up a Noosa Open Studios Art Trail 2022 guide at Wallace House. Or download it at https://noosaopenstudios.com.au/art-trail-guide/ The guide gives you a short bio, an address, and opening times along with Instagram and Facebook handles to see more work.
This Magnificent Life met painters Kate Florence and Rosie Woods, who share studio space in Noosaville. Margie Gibson and Julia Vail also share a studio at Doonan, as do Rowley Drysdale and Sarah Therese at Cooroy. Renton Bisphoric is Mr Pottery for the Planet at Noosaville. Also at Noosaville is painter and mixed media artist Rosie Lloyd-Giblett, while sculptor and former chef Pierre Otth resides at Peregian Beach. Silversmith and jewellery artist Anne Everingham is on Trail 3 at Eumundi.
Trail 1 Noosa
Contemporary painter Kate Florence works mostly in acrylics. She feels she is still exploring how to work with paint and approaches each piece without a defined outcome in mind. With a background in Fine Art and textiles, her work is reminiscent of post-modern expressionism and Matissian composition.
Rosie is a muralist, street artist and abstract realist painter who works predominantly with aerosol paint. Her vivid work feels otherworldly with broad cascading veils of iridescent colour and hyper-realistic texture. She sees her art as “a dance between the materiality of painting and the slick aesthetics of the digital”.
Born to potters, Renton Bisphoric naturally took up the family ‘business’. His practice successfully straddles the commercial and the art world. His ‘Pottery for the Planet’ brand was born to help eradicate single-use culture and plastic waste in Australia and beyond.
Each hand-made keep-cup, travel bowl, mug and plate are made ethically, sustainably and creatively. Likewise, the packaging is recycled and re-purposed to eliminate plastic, and their wholesale model allows the public to buy locally and minimises freight packaging and carbon emissions.
Rosie’s local Noosa natural environment shapes her artistic direction to paint her colourful, expressive paintings. While she works on paper and canvas, Rosie sometimes incorporates collage and uses natural brushes from sticks and leaves she finds in the National Park. Working mainly en plain air, she incorporates different textures in her sometimes colourful and sometimes more muted work.
She wants to entice viewers of her work to “smell the foliage, view the colour pathways and understand the tune of the natural world”.
Born in Lausanne, Pierre began his creative process as a chef and is a Noosa culinary legend. Today, he shapes limestone, not food, into marvellous organic, sensual shapes.
He came late to sculpture, and seeing Auguste Rodin’s Andromeda in Paris inspired him to pick up the tools and create.
Anne Everingham’s jewellery is bold but classic, earthy but refined and always head-turning. Incorporating semi-precious and precious jewels, stone, shells, gold and silver, each statement piece tells a story.
One of the most unusual pieces on display during Noosa Open Studios is a white jade teething ring reimagined into a stunning necklace.
Margie Gibson is a contemporary painter, sculptor and ceramicist. Working from her charming studio, she creates refined sculptures and bold paintings that are born from the land, sea and rockscapes.
Her highly refined sculpture contrasts with her stylised painting.
Born in Paris, Julia studied at the Bath Academy of Art where she graduated with a B.A. in Three Dimensional Design (Ceramics). Julia’s ceramics are curved, asymmetrical, ethereal and bold in their simplicity.
Her interest has always been in hand-built forms focusing on curved, tactile and asymmetrical vessels, with one form inspiring and leading to the next.
In a former life, Sarah Therese worked in marketing for big-name Australian fashion brands. She now creates wheel-thrown ceramics and embellishes with the ancient ‘sgraffito’ method of layering colour and then ‘scratching’ the superficial layer to reveal the base colour. Rowley and Sarah’s patch of paradise in Cooroy is pure inspiration.
Sarah is a former President of Noosa Open Studios. Her highly detailed ceramics reflect her love for colour, flowers and nature. Unlike anywhere else Rowley and Sarah’s patch of paradise in Cooroy is pure inspiration.
As one of Australia’s most celebrated ceramicists, Rowley Drysdale is no newcomer to the Noosa Open Studios Art Trail.
The land and, in particular, the spectacular rainforest landscape that surrounds Rowley and Sarah’s ‘Quixotica Art Space’ sparks his imagination and creativity.
When Rowley isn’t sharing his knowledge and skills to his workshop students he’s usually making or firing in the wood kilns on the property.
Read more about Noosa Open Studios and ARTober in Noosa
