Here’s to a beautiful life, fill your glasses, be merry. Here is what I want to share with you. It is how I paint: My talk at Driving Creek Gallery Exhibition 7th Dec 2023 - 3rd Jan 2024
The third Eye is the opening to your creativity your inner creative power it is a crystal energy. This energy is quite hard to hold you most likely feel you need to make a cup of tea, sort of do anything to escape it. If you do feel this way. Breathe it in. Do a little deep breathing helps it to stay put in the body If you can hold it -it is another dimension of yourself. The creative vibration on a higher vibrational level than you are possibly used to.
When the creative energy comes in its possible to feel it Its quite hard to hold as your creative dimension comes to you, You will feel you are holding something strange Be open hold it, don’t run away. Consider yourself a crystal being Be in a none judgmental space of the self, In other words seeing through your crystal soul eye there is a knowingness that when you look at a coloured tube of paint use it and know it to be so at that moment It is the colour to use or the thing to do in this moment one step at a time One next moment following the next Moments keep coming one after the other they come Now here is where you need to trust the self completely trusting the self-feeling.
One needs to be in a state of unconditional love non-judgment and a kind of knowingness ancient wisdom Importance to be happy and loving with the self-more To learn to love and love the self-more.
Teach Colour Wheel The primary colours are the parents Red Blue Yellow the children are the colours on either side purple green orange the cousins are the colour on either side of the children and they are your neutrals To create drama, use dark and light Black and white are space holders used in the design and they needs to be broken up and softened in the spaces they are holding.
A painting comes into existence when it is being viewed and created at the same time It’s the experience of the creator and the viewer at the same time, that’s important. Painting the canvas is the experience, created out of curiosity wanting to know what happens next in Imagination vast.
Keep putting on the paint be aware of the design conformation the 2/3 rule Zig zag oval round shapes and distance recession your layout of the divisions especially your style unfolding.
The canvas has a title, knows what it wants to be, like a short story, a piece of music, poem etc.
There is a rhythm and it has a title which is your expression If you find yourself in a bit of chaos’s go back to the principle of good design define your spaces, colour and stay with the experience. You will be in the creative mind that also swings between the logical one and feel yourself in another dimension Paint the work from all directions etc. e.g. upside down sideways take risks see what happens what is the dominant colour to be in the final editing.
Put warm colours over cool colours e.g. hot reds over cool reds etc. Colours in separate places on canvas- With colour group hots over cool hots and cool blues under warm blues.
The editing stage it is easier than the initial creative stage of holding the expressive energy and you a bit off the planet and if disturbed your feel yourself drop back- fall back in your body The inner voice leads a merry dance There is a conversation between you and the canvas Work is finished when the voice of the canvas is silent the painter and the viewer satisfied Never wipe out a work to start again but trust and keep going the answers never fail to come even if it is days or weeks later as new ideas come forth skill level increases but staying with it you will learn to trust the process yourself, come to new learning. Paint a number of canvas at the same time.
For the second year, Driving Creek will host The Coromandel Pestival on Saturday 6th of May from 10am to 6pm at the Driving Creek Gallery in Coromandel Town.
The Coromandel is home to beautiful coastlines and beaches, and precious forests and wildlife. This free all-day educational and networking event will focus on our native species and what we can do to protect them. The Pestival is open to anyone interested in conservation, hard-working volunteers, local community groups and organisations involved in The Coromandel's effort to become pest-free.
The event will be an ideal opportunity for networking, learning about new innovations and best practice methods, and listening to insightful presentations from environmental experts such as Dr. Trevor James, Dr. Andrew Veale, Danilo Hegg, Doug Ashby, Richard Johnson and Benson Lockhart.
With workshops, exhibits, stalls, kids activities and guided tours throughout the day, it will be an educational day for the whole family.
The Pestival is a free event but a koha is much appreciated.
This April 14–23rd at the Barry Brickell Gallery, Driving Creek, Coromandel, Five Artists exhibiting as 'Elementa 5. Come along to view their works.
Anneke Borren + Caitlin Moloney Ceramic Collaboration Exhibition
You are warmly invited to attend the exhibition of Anneke Borren and Caitlin Moloney's collaborative works at Driving Creek Railway and Potteries Gallery in Coromandel town between Friday the 24th March and the 9th of April.
These ceramic pieces have been two years in the making, each taking up to two months to create. This journey has been a labour of love and commitment to the integrity of each other's work.
Official opening Friday the 24th at 5:30pm. All are welcome.
Open 10am - 4pm daily.
The exhibition Two Birds by Anneke Borren and Caitlin Moloney is a collaboration grounded in a respect for the mastery of each other's work. These forms have been two and a half years in the making speaking to the slow and methodical process of Caitlin's creative practice.
Anneke and Caitlin met at Driving Creek briefly during the summer of 2019, where Anneke was attending an artist residency and Caitlin was working while still maintaining her creative practice.
One day, while stacking a kiln, Anneke handed Caitlin one of her porcelain forms and said, "Here, decorate this"!
The results were so stunning that from this one pot the collaboration formed.
Both makers are inspired by social anthropology, of how humans are shaped by and connected to the natural world. Much of their time working together was in conversation around these topics, feeding into the development of these works.
Caitlin is unique in her approach to Anneke's forms showing an understanding of their structure, of how to enhance them through her surface treatment and ceramic embellishments while retaining the integrity of the pieces. While working, Caitlin was reminded of the regal nature of birds, their natural beauty and grace being a source of wonder and connection, in turn inspiring the ceramic embellishments on some of the forms.
This collaboration has been a stunning journey of bringing Anneke's forms from the world of domestic ware into decorative sculptural pieces, of seeing how far they could be pushed.
Ceramiste M.N.Z.M
If ever there was someone born to be a potter it is Anneke Borren. Since she was 12 she has passionately pursued that single course, improving, changing, experimenting and growing. Born in Holland and now resident in New Zealand, her early career saw her working as an artist potter at "De Porceleyne Fles" the Delft-Blue factory in Delft, Holland. Later she was to take up ceramics and glass studies at the Konstindustri Skolan in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Anneke Borren met Barry Brickell in 1970 when they were both members of the N.Z.Potters Guild set up to promote professional potters careers in this country. All the top names of the small but active group of potters making a living solely from clay, were part of this group. The Guild quietly reintegrated into the N.Z. Potter's Society at the end of 1976 because actually, we were all too busy making a living. But it created a strong bond between us all. and over the years that grew.
DCR became one of our focus areas. Decades later, Barry became part of the N.Z.Ceramic Heritage Collection group, custodians of the evidence of the standard N.Z Potters set themselves in the 1980s and 90's. We were up there with Mino, Japan, hundreds of years of clay culture, Faienza, Italy and Auckland N.Z, 30 yrs via Fletcher Brown Build Challenge creating the three top exhibitions in the world!! The N.Z Ceramic Heritage Collection is now housed at DCR. Anneke was part of all that, and more.
So while Caitlin and Anneke were collaborating at DCR, Anneke was also creating her own clay memories there.
All the pots Anneke made , for herself, called the " kauri Bark Series,"during her collaboration period, to celebrate Barry's conservation contributions, will be part of the collaboration exhibition, as these works are made of Barry's Coro gold clay, and his stoneware, on site at DCR.
It's also acknowledging Barry's huge generosity in fostering international and local potters careers.
We raise our dinner glass of wine, each night at DCR, with a toast to Barry, in remembrance, in affection, and in celebration of his iconic stature in the Ceramic world.
In 2022 N.Z. New Years Honours list Anneke was made a Member of the N.Z.Order of Merit, for services to Ceramic Art.
Caitlin Moloney is an Australian born multidisciplinary artist of Celtic, Iberian and north west European descent. Her early exposure to multiculturalism, community care and social justice has instilled in her a deep curiosity to explore an integrated culture in a colonised world. What is our language of connection to place and to each other? In her making Caitlin turns repeatedly to the rhythm and shapes found in nature, our plants and animals - and their constant renewal.
Caitlin studied at Queensland College of Art in Brisbane, Australia where she touched on her interest in sculpture by majoring in metal work. Caitlin has always been a maker, whether she was drawing, working with paint, textiles or metal, the need to create has always been there.
Finding the Coromandel clay community at Driving Creek Railway and Potteries in 2005, Caitlin was taught skills by local and international artists. Over time Caitlin found herself creating sculptural forms integrating clay and metal, revisiting her earlier interests in bringing materials together. Caitlin is excited to see how far she can take her ideas and by how far she can push the development of different mediums.
Driving Creek is an environment shaped by living so close to the earth, in rhythm with the land. This has formed a community of unconventional makers, supporting Caitlin's creative growth with grassroots learning.