Tag Archives: Deepwater

Art, Artists

Lineage and landscape: get back to Deepwater for the art

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A SPLASH of creativity is resurfacing in the New England Deepwater district, with a team of locals gearing up to deliver the town’s beloved art show again in autumn 2023.

Last held in 2014, the event is a significant fundraiser for the region. From March 31 to April 4, 2023, it will feature guest artists and work by local creatives and artisans against a backdrop of music, workshops and food at Deepwater’s School of Arts.

Convenor Catie Macansh said she has been delighted by the enthusiastic response to the revival of this community event.

“It’s great to have the generous support of sponsors, led by Highlands Real Estate Glen Innes, which is backing our major art award.

“We encourage artists from across the region to prepare their very best work and enter it for our three-day, curated exhibition, with $4500 of judged prizes in the mix.”

Artist Jane Henry returned to live and work on a cattle and cropping property in the Dumaresq Valley, and will be one of several featured artists at the event.

“It is wonderful to have the opportunity to share some creativity and stimulus with a small rural community like Deepwater, as they are always extremely welcoming and appreciative,” she said.

“The opportunity to socialise, meet new people and enjoy new experiences is embraced wholeheartedly and I love to support this interaction by displaying my creative impressions.”

SLOW-STITCHED Botanical artwork by Jane Henry

Henry will be exhibiting a collection of intricate artworks combining her love of Australian flora and paying homage to her mother and grandmothers, who passed down the skill and appreciation of slow needlework.

“I am constantly extending the capabilities of stitching on paper with natural fibres, dyes and natural objects I collect,” she said. 

“These are extremely intricate and time consuming pieces which showcase and preserve various natural forms.”

Stunning homelands

Lauren Rogers is a proud Ngarabal woman whose mob comes from the Deepwater region and has strong ancestral ties there. She is “blessed and humbled” to be invited to exhibit her contemporary Indigenous art at the Deepwater Art Show.

“I am thrilled to return to my traditional homelands to connect with my Country, the land, and my ancestors,” she said.

COMING HOME Ngarabal artist Lauren Rogers

“Sharing my artwork with the Deepwater community and celebrating First Nations’ history and culture will be a memorable experience.”

Rogers will bring pieces from her Coming Home collection, sharing important stories of her Ngarabal Country lineage to honour what she calls the “stunning geographical location” of Deepwater. 

“My preferred medium is acrylic on canvas, using vibrant colours to contrast and expose the deferring dimensions in the painting,” she said.

Ochre Lawson (pictured in main image) grew up on properties near Wollomombi and Glen Innes. 

“This time spent in native bush gave me a great love and appreciation for our wildness areas and how important they are for their beauty and health and wellbeing of the land,” she said.

“All my work is based on trips into wilderness country throughout Australia, where I gather source material through en plein air sketching, hiking deep into remote areas such as the Tasmanian high country, Kosciuszko and Washpool National Park.”  

Lawson says participating in the Deepwater Art Show and being able to support the Arts in regional NSW is very special. 

“As the Deepwater show is a fundraiser for different local charities, I’m very happy to participate knowing how important these organisations are for rural communities.  

“I feel very lucky to have grown up in rural Australia and feel that connection between city and country is more important than ever if we are to band together to battle climate change.”

A selection of Lawson’s semi-abstract paintings from her Kosciuszko, outback New South Wales, and Tasmanian series will be exhibited at the Deepwater School of Arts.

‘Organised mess’

Toowoomba-based artist Monique Correy grew up in Glen Innes and feels lucky to maintain strong connections with rural NSW.

“My parents aren’t farmers but we had all sorts of animals growing up and this has definitely had an impact on the things I paint,” she said.

DUCKS FOR DEEPWATER Artwork by Monique Correy

“I love the Glen Innes and surrounding community – they have been so supportive of me and It means a lot that I can give back in some way by being a part of this show.”

Known for her distinct painterly brushstrokes and stripped-back style, Correy describes her paintings as “an organised mess”.

After her first exhibition sold out on opening night, she is bringing some beloved favourites to Deepwater Art Show.

“Everyone loves ducks, and maybe a cowboy or two!” she said.

The final featured artist of the event, Clare Purser enjoys painting and drawing en plein air around her home on Brisbane’s Bayside.

“I’m interested in creating paintings that are evocative and intuitive and express an emotive reaction to the landscape,” she said.

Working mainly in oils and with mixed media on canvas, board and paper, Purser gathers inspiration for her vibrant land- and seascapes from notes and sketches.

She was recently as a finalist in the Sunshine Coast, Redlands and Moreton Bay region art awards.

EMOTIONAL LANDSCAPE Painter Clare Purser

Unique shindig

A great line of live performers, workshop facilitators, sponsors and special guests are gearing up for the program of events planned by the Deepwater Art Show committee.

Editor of Galah magazine, Annabelle Hickson, will open the show on Friday March 30. Guests will also experience performances by soprano Laura King and other musicians.

This unique opening night shindig will kick off a long weekend of high teas, artisan markets, and a workshop series, all delivered by New England-based creatives, including Carolyn McCosker, Joanne Barr, Adele Chapman-Burgess and Richard Moon.

For more information, tickets and entries, head to the Deepwater Art Show website

Art, My Story

Capturing the colours of Ngarabal country

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“It was the myriad of colours of semi-rural landscapes that captured my imagination.”

THIS writer and artist has been neglecting his blog. I’ve got a decent excuse, however: I’ve moved.

After five years living on Coochiemudlo Island in South East Queensland, my husband and I have returned to live in the NSW Northern Tablelands.

This place is border country, a series of high-altitude tablelands just south of the notional line on the map that separates Queensland from NSW.

COUNTRY COLOURS The views between Deepwater and Tenterfield in the NSW Northern Tablelands.

While living on an island in Queensland’s Moreton Bay, we met many of the Quandamooka people, particularly artists. Here, in Ngarabal country, we’re aware of living close to one of the largest Koori language groups in this state: the Kamilaroi, and it’s been great meeting Kamilaroi people and their neighbours in nearby Ngarabal traditional lands.

Two years ago we attended the Myall Creek Massacre memorial, which commemorates one of the worst atrocities against Indigenous Australians.

That trip back to the place I was born inspired, in part, our recent move. The taste of the high country inspired several other trips, which became property and house-hunting expeditions from the Granite Belt to the New England region.

We saw some incredible landscapes, often bursting with wildlife. We encountered places where some big dreams had been broken over the years, and where people have found opportunities to make homes in all kinds of situations, many of them quite unconventional.

Often, I was reminded of Germaine Greer’s reforestation of a former dairy farm, also in the border country.

British novelist E. M. Forster’s sense of place often crossed my mind, also, particularly his unexpected acquisition of a woodland adjacent to his home at Abinger Hammer, not far from London.

VIEWS FOREVER Country west of Stanthorpe in Queensland.

We considered buying a five-acre block of forest so close to the border you could throw a stone interstate. We got very serious about an 80-acre lot of land in the western slopes, where emu walked on the horizon and people had come looking for gold, but found nothing.

The day we extended our search into the upland valley of Deepwater in NSW was crisp. It was July and there was frost on the car when we left the motel at Tenterfield to head into the old tin mining country of Stannum. A property we were shown there had character, but with all its living spaces on the shady south side, it was not a wise choice for life at a thousand metres above sea level.

Before lunch we found our way into the open land south of the Deepwater River, where an old railway property had been on the market for a couple of years. A former gatekeeper’s cottage, this 1885 double-brick dwelling had been lovingly restored and extended in the decades since the railway service north of Armidale had ceased.

GOING DEEP The Deepwater River in Ngarabal Country.

The nearby New England Highway had long since been rerouted, leaving this place and all its secrets in a world of its own, nestled between state habitat reserve and grazing property.

We loved it before we even stepped through the door, where the passive solar nature of brick houses meant the place was warm without even having the fire on.

Within weeks of arrival I was inspired to paint. The broad vistas of Moreton Bay were left far behind, and it was the myriad of colours of semi-rural landscapes that captured my imagination.

I’d spent a significant proportion of my childhood absorbing these lands, and after spending time driving between Tablelands’ towns, the work flowed as quickly as paint blended with water on canvas.

It’s sometimes confronting being back. My family left this place on the back of several broken dreams of our own, but the landscape of this place is an incredible consolation.

Check out my online gallery.

© Michael Burge, all rights reserved.