Permission to stray

THE name of a new exhibition at Ross Creek Gallery points to an underling ethos that four artists and friends share.

Outside the Lines opens on Saturday 4 July and runs through to Sunday 26 July, featuring original work by established artists who have been friends and peers for years.

They all, at some point, worked for the iconic Australian artist fashion brand Katsui in Ballarat.

The creations of Ballarat’s April Welfare, Learmonth’s Sarah Lloyd, Sue Quinlan Brain who resides near Portland, and the gallery’s own Janine Ronaldson will all go on show.

For Welfare, place, memory and personal history collide in her series of ten paintings and handprints that pay homage to her western district upbringing on a property at Bradvale near Skipton.

“Some are landscape-based and are some are drawn from familiar objects that belonged to my parents who were married for 71 years,” she said.

“There’s a connection to a sense of place and personal history.

“They are oil on canvas and a series of handprints mixing a couple of different methods. I have used monoprints and lino as a stamp and combined them together.”

Place is a source of inspiration for Quinlan Brain whose paintings capture both the farmland and the bushland settings of her current home situated between Portland and Mount Gambier.

“I’ll just get out there in the bush with the paints and draw and paint outside then finish off the paintings in the studio,” she said.

“I start with acrylics and finish with oil.”

Longtime Ballarat locals will racall Quinlan Brain both from Katsui that she founded with her sister Kate, and from the gallery they ran in Lydiard Street in the 90s.

For each of the artists represented, Outside the Lines aims to celebrate continuity, mutual inspiration and the artistic freedom to push boundaries.

“When we were all working at Katsui there was a lot of hand painting in the production of the work there and we had the motto that you don’t have to paint inside the lines,” Welfare laughed.

“It’s about giving yourself that permission to remember that as an artist you don’t have to stay in the lines.”

Ross Creek Gallery is at 183 Post Office Road, Smythes Creek and is open weekends and by appointment.

The exhibition will have an opening event on Sunday 5 July.