LOCAL ARTIST PAINTS ROZELLE.
You
may have
recently noticed the artist Michael Kelly setting up his easel and
canvas at various locations around the Rozelle area, painting some of
the old industrial buildings or sketching in the grounds of Callan
Park. Michael has recently moved into a studio in the area and is
producing paintings and drawings of the old suburb before it is
transformed. “I have memories of the area from nearly thirty years
ago when I lived and worked nearby,” says Michael,” my work has
always been concerned with the past and how it impacts on the
present.”
It was while
Michael was an art student at what is now the National Art School in
Darlinghurst that he painted some of his first ‘plein- air pictures
around Rozelle Bay towards what is now the Anzac Bridge. That was in
1985. In his last solo Sydney exhibition at the prestigious
Australian Galleries in Paddington in 2005, he included a large
canvas of the Anzac Bridge painted from drawings done on the Pyrmont
side of the bridge. “ I feel as if I’ve come full circle “,
the artist says.
On completing
his
course at the N.A.S., Michael moved to Melbourne where he continued
his studies at the Victorian College of the Arts graduating with
honors in 1988. He traveled to Europe and America where he visited
art museums and returned to Melbourne where he lived and worked until
returning to live in Sydney in 2004. In between he held ten solo
exhibitions and showed work in over thirty group shows. He won prizes
for his work and was part of an informal group of artists who would
go out and paint in various locations around Melbourne each Friday,
and whose work was toured around the regional galleries of Victoria
as the Five Hundred Fridays exhibition. Michael also taught drawing
and painting for many years in art schools around Melbourne.
Since
returning to
Sydney in 1994 Michael has had solo exhibitions in Sydney and
Canberra, including an exhibition of still lives and landscapes he’d
done as artist in residence at Bundanon, the former home of
landscape artist Arthur Boyd on the Shoalhaven River. “I’m quiet
excited to be working around Rozelle again”, says Michael, “ the
urban landscape has been the main subject of my work over the years
I’ve been painting. Unfortunately though the subjects I like to
paint , the abandoned tracts of land and old industrial buildings are
becoming harder to find and harder to access. Time is of the essence
before this landscape vanishes altogether .”
As a curator once
wrote in one of Michaels exhibition catalogues, “ looking at
Michael Kellys paintings is akin to capturing and freezing a passing
moment, preserving forever unexpected glimpses of the ever changing
urban landscape, be it in historic, atmospheric, or artistic terms.
They form a memory of places and visions that may have altered by the
time the artist has folded up his easel.”
Michael
Kelly’s paintings are available for sale at Eva Breuer Art Gallery,
83 Moncur St. Woolhara, and can be viewed on the galleries website :
www.evabreuerartdealer.com.au
adexpress@fcproductions.com.au
