Artist draws on the environment

JULIE Mahnken has brought some Equilibrium to Soldiers Hill.

Currently the Old Butchers’ Shop Gallery’s featured artist, Mahnken’s “expressive, dramatic” charcoal drawings of the built and natural landscape are on show until Sunday, 28 November.

“The content of the exhibition is about seeing and valuing the world around us, and searching for environmental balance,” she said.

“My style is open and depicts a sense of constant change. Things don’t remain the same, they’re open to energy and space around them.

“It’s as much about what we don’t see, as what we choose to see.”

Mahnken completed a bachelor of fine art at Federation University in recent years, committing to her creative experimentation after a career in healthcare.

“I always made art but wanted the qualification, and to go to art school,” she said.

“In the last few years, I was teaching a studio drawing class at U3A, and that allowed me to deepen my knowledge of drawing, and explore the medium as a finished artform itself.

“Exploring charcoal resulted in this body of work and exhibition, Equilibrium.”

Mahnken enjoys working with this dark-toned medium which encourages “mark-making” and has a bold, immediate impact.

“Charcoal captures the essence of the subject; trees, buildings, different scenes around. It allows you to spontaneously depict a feeling of the essence of the subject,” she said.

“I try to go to the heart of whatever the subject is.”

Each Saturday and Sunday for the rest of the month, Mahnken will be at the Gallery on the corner of Seymour and Neill streets from 1pm to 4pm.