Two artists, one country

JUDY Hutchins and Elaine Van Dyk’s upcoming exhibition, Same Country, Different Interpretations is showcasing their contrasting visions of the Australian landscape.

Both artists live in the Heathcote region, but their varied life experiences and use of different media give them distinctive artistic voices.

“Elaine came and saw my solo exhibition at Kyabram, and she suggested it would be good to do a collaboration,” Hutchins said.

“She said that even though our works are different, she thought they would gel together well.”

When a call for expressions of interest for exhibiting at Dudley House in Bendigo came up, the pair seized the opportunity.

“We applied,” Hutchins said. “We didn’t think we get it, but we did and what the City of Greater Bendigo have given us is really great.

“Elaine and I come from very diverse backgrounds, but we both have an affinity for the land and for the country.

“It’s how we interpret it, and Elaine interprets it differently to me.”

Long school holidays spent with her grandparents on an outback station where they worked as caretakers still influence part of Hutchins’s work today.

“It was between Hay and Griffith, there were no towns nearby, the station was huge, and it was self-sufficient,” she said.

“They killed their own meat, they had their own milk, they grew fruit, everything really.

“We went to town in Griffith, and it was a big deal to go to town, it was maybe once a month or every six weeks and we bought things in bulk.

“A lot of my memories are from that, waking up early in the morning when the sun’s already hot.

“It’s those red earth and big skies that I try and capture in my work.”

Her work is mainly in oil and cold wax, using colour and texture to depict the essence of the landscape.

“I work intuitively,” she said. “I don’t necessarily have anything in front of me when I’m working, I work from memories and feelings and recollections of what it was like when I was there.

“I try and catch the heat, the atmosphere, the whole feeling of that place in that time.”

But the Heathcote region is also an important focus for Hutchins.

“I live here in this forest, and I’ve lived here for 40 years,” she said. “I look out the window and I see forest.”

“My work encompasses forests and the feeling of being in a forest.”

“I’ve also got a really strong connection to the Heathcote area through family and family history, and I feel an affinity for this area and that comes through in my paintings as well.”

South African born Van Dyk has always had a love of nature.

“Most of my growing up involved going on holidays to game reserves and things like that,” she said.

“When I came to Australia, I found there were many similarities to South Africa, but many things that were not the same.”

Van Dyk spent three years in Australia in her late teens and early 20s and returned permanently in 1977 after a stint in Paris.

She lived in Melbourne for many years before moving to Heathcote on a full-time basis in 2016.

“I was painting, I was drawing and I was printmaking but without a specific area that I really wanted to work in,” she said. “When we moved to Heathcote it just came together.

“I’m fascinated by trees and their shapes.

“For me, the character of a place is in the shapes, the trees and the colours, although I don’t paint realistically, it’s more representational.”

“I like to sketch and even just off a basic sketch; I’ll do a painting from that.

“There’s always something to refer to, I don’t do a finished painting straight from my head.”

Sometimes Van Dyk uses a plein air work, previously painted outdoors, for reference.

“Then it’s just intuitive, what I want to do with the colours, what I want to create and the feeling of it,” she said.

“But it’s landscapes from wherever I go, I just love this country, I love South Africa too, but I love the bush.”

Same Country, Different Interpretations is at Dudley House, 50 View Street in Bendigo from Friday 4 August to Sunday 13 August.

Opening night runs from 6-8pm, contact the gallery for daytime operating hours.