Former international opera singer explores ageing in new exhibition

AFTER almost two decades performing opera around the world, Ocean Grove artist Sally Wilson has returned to the visual arts with an exhibition exploring age, wisdom and renewal.

Arise, now showing at The Hive Gallery, features 13 ink, charcoal and pastel works centred on owls, long-regarded as symbols of wisdom.

Returning to visual art after years on the international opera stage prompted Wilson to reflect on ageing— both her own and that of those around her.

Watching people close to her aging has borne the concept for Arise, which she described as “an exploration of wisdom with age”.

“The stage that I am at in life is a fascinating one,” Wilson said. “I’m not saying we necessarily do become wiser; we become older.”

That idea naturally led Wilson to owls, a subject she has been fascinated by since childhood, when she sketched the birds around her family’s farm near Derrinallum.

While music became her career after leaving school, visual art remained a constant.

A year spent working at a traditional inn in Japan introduced Wilson to calligraphy, an influence she revisited last year while studying under renowned artist Toshiko Oiyama at the National Art School in Sydney.

“I loved a lot of the simplicity of Japanese art,” she said. “The simplicity of the line and the calligraphy.”

Wilson said Japanese ink painting embraces empty space as much as the marks themselves.

“I like playing with that idea of perspective and things that are incomplete, but our eye completes them for us,” she said.

She also sees strong parallels between painting and the art form that shaped much of her career.

“One of the most important elements of music is silence, and for me, that translates to the quiet space in works,” Wilson said.

“It has been a thrill to realise that so much of what’s in music is immediately transferable into visual art.

“There is rhythm in visual art, there is quiet in visual art, there is texture in art and in music. All of these things exist in art, visual art and in music. There is balance, there is harmony, there is colour.”

Although painting has become a greater focus, Wilson continues to perform in concerts and recitals.

She and her husband, concert pianist Dr Mark Kruger, also present Bellarine Classics, a monthly series of performances at the Barwon Heads Arts Hub.

Arise is showing at The Hive Gallery in Ocean Grove until 2 August.