“Coast -The Edge” family art exhibition

A NEW art exhibition featuring work from local photographer Roger Skinner, his brother Ian and sister Sally are now on display at the Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre.

The ‘Coast -The Edge’ exhibition derived from the three artists’ obsession with the ocean, each drawing inspiration from time spent by the seaside.

What started as a two-person show made up of Roger and Ian’s works ended in a family affair, with the late addition of sister Sally’s work, who lives by the ocean in Narooma.

The exhibition is open to the public for a limited time only, with visitors required to provide their name and contact details on arrival in line with NSW Health regulations.

Behind the artists:

Sally Burnside

Sally works in watercolour, acrylics and photography, whereas her brothers work almost exclusively in photography. Her works offers a contrast not only in media, but also pointing up the difference of approach by an artist who in comparison with her brothers, lives by the ocean.

“10.48am Thirty-first December 2019, Looking to Cobargo” by Sally Burnside.

“The ocean has long been an obsession of mine. I am drawn to where the ocean meets the land and the apparently unlimited possibilities it seems to offer me, the idea that I could go anywhere through that vast horizon and how small a person is in the universe,” said Sally Burnside.

“I love to watch the details of light play across the surface, see different reflections distorted and most importantly experience the calm amid the silence while underwater.  The quiet, the embrace, the support,” she said.

“My goal is to capture ocean images so that even when not in or beside it, I always have it with me,” she said.

Sally drew inspiration from the poem The Surfer by Judith Wright:

“Muscle of arm thrust down long muscle of water;
and swimming so, went out of sight
where mortal, masterful, frail, the gulls went wheeling
in air as he in water, with delight.”

Ian Skinner

Ian has long been fascinated by the concept of the Edge, whether it be where one plane or material meets another in craft and construction, in musical changes of key or rhythm, the front of an approaching weather change, or – the edge of the land.

“Fanned Shore” by Ian Skinner.

“Where tension, construction and chaos bring delight. In many ways there is no more dynamic edge than the one where our continent meets its surrounding oceans and seas,” said Ian Skinner.

“I have had the good fortune to spend an increasing length of time contemplating this Edge in south-eastern Australia and bringing my lens view to it,” he said.

“As writer Tim Winton said in Land’s Edge (1993): ‘There is more bounty, more possibility for us in a vista that moves, rolls, surges, twists, rears up and changes from minute to minute. The innate human feeling from the veranda is that if you look out to sea long enough, something will turn up. We are a race of veranda dwellers,'” he said.

Roger Skinner

Roger uses a technique first revealed to him by Gary Foye, an artist in the Muswellbrook Shire Collection. He was the artist who first proposed the exhibition to Muswellbrook Regional Arts Centre in late 2018.

“He [Foye] was chatting to me about his way of working. Foye goes out into the landscape and searches the view before him for a motif, then having found one refers and re refers to in the works that he develops from that landscape,” said Roger Skinner.

“Transcendence, Bird With Approaching Scud” by Roger Skinner.

“Using this technique, one is constantly delighted how it comes up again and again where one least expects to find it, Accordingly I chose a series of Zen observations of isolated granite boulders, stranded in sand smoothed over time, tide marked covering in red lichen and resting perfectly, on the west coast of Flinders Island and a recurring motif on Christmas Island of birds, flying constantly, in monsoonal scuds and squalls of rain,” he said.

“This is contrasted by a series of detailed observations of that sad cemetery of Wybalenna, which again whilst being abstract in the thought behind their creation, perhaps renders us as guilty as charged,” he said.