Pictured above: “Abundance” Quilt, finalist in Holmes Realistic Bird Art Prize, 2023
2023 has been quite the year, and despite the challenge of having a frozen shoulder for the most part, I still managed to achieve quite a lot.
I commenced the year by being voted in as Treasurer of the Queensland Wildlife Artists Society, so had lots of committee duties and meetings added to the jobs to be done. I have thoroughly enjoyed doing this and highly recommend anyone thinking of joining a committee to jump in without hesitation. As a club we achieved so much, including multiple highly successful exhibitions, including the group’s 40th year of existence. It was a wonderful celebration with special awards being presented at the Mt Cooth-ha exhibition in October.
As well as this, I managed to make an entry for the Australasian Quilt Convention Challenge “In Full Bloom”, which was accepted as a finalist and travelled around Australia for the better part of the year. For the Holmes Realistic Bird Art Prize, I just scraped in getting an artwork ready for entry, and was once again honoured to have been accepted as a finalist.
Maleny Art Direct facilitated my artwork being exhibited at Downlands Exhibition in Toowoomba in September, which was a great success and I was lucky enough that my son provided me with some gorgeous landscape photographs to use as reference for some localised country scenes, which all found happy new homes.
My entry in to the RNA Quilts Across Queensland came home with a 2nd place ribbon, so very pleased and proud that my entry did well there.
I was also honoured to have made it as a finalist in the Local Artist Local Content exhibition run by the Caloundra Regional Art Gallery, with a little landscape. I love being a part of this exhibition, it is wonderful to celebrate and promote local.
My busiest achievement though was managing to make 50 more embroidered paintings than what I normally do in a year, wow, that is a big increase! A huge thank you to all that purchased one or more of my artworks, you make it all worthwhile.
For 2024, I am continuing to be involved with the Queensland Wildlife Artists Society, where I have made some wonderful friendships. Seaview Artists Gallery is in it’s 30th year of operation, so we are planning on celebrating with the theme of “Pearl” and I am already working on some pearl themed artworks for our events. As much as I would like to enter as many competitions as I usually do, that may not happen as it is shaping up to be a busy year in my personal as well as professional life, but I will try my best to meet those deadlines!
I managed to get my bird art prints up online in to an etsy shop, so please do take a look and order your prints, there are multiple options available, and I am always open to commission requests with the framed embroidered paintings.
Wishing all of my loyal followers a wonderful and prosperous 2024, I hope it brings happiness to you all.