Mother Nature inspires art show

ARTISTS from all walks of life are encouraged to enter a new Ocean Grove art show, The Blank Canvas, and raise money for the environment by doing so.

The show’s curator and local Greens advocate John Bowman said he wanted to organise an art show in conjunction with live music that encouraged people to give back to Mother Nature.

“The canvases are five dollars each for entrants, and the theme is the environment. I’m going to hang the pieces up at Driftwood Café then we’ll have a silent auction giving all the proceeds to The Greens.

“The event will have live music staring The Disco Rocker Trio (Tim Neal, Jeff Raglus and Simon Dawe). I approached Ty Simmons who owns Driftwood and he said he was happy for us to host the June 14 event running from 7-10pm.

“As well as a fellow environmentalist, Ty is also a patron of the arts with local artists exhibiting on his cafe walls, so it was a natural fit to have music and visual art show on the one night.”

Local renowned artists including Kaz McGlynn and Julie Peddler have already collected their canvases as well an array of primary and secondary students.

“Since we began promoting it on social media we’ve already distributed 82 small canvases. My son is an artist so suggested the smaller size canvas to save costs for the artists,” Mr Bowman said.

He said some of the artists were currently preparing work for the popular Bellarine Arts Trail on the Melbourne Cup weekend.

“A few of them were going to make the time to get this one done. There is a big local arts community and hopefully the Blank Canvas will also become an annual event.

“We hope to have all the completed works returned a week before the show to be hung on the cafe walls in preparation for the no-reserves silent auction.”

For your chance to enter and to book a ticket, email [email protected] or go to trybooking.com/book/event?eid=382671&.