ALCHEMY Process

                                       

2024 - 2025   Exhibitions  

I have decided to concentrate on a body of work that will be used in my next two exhibitions.

I will produce six 60x60cm paintings for BIA for 2024 and Six  60 x 60cm for Esk Glen Rock Gallery for May 2025.

 BIRD  exhibition at The Brisbane Institute of Art November 9th - 19th, 2024 

Sharon Lee    Linda Black    Lyn Derrick

Our group have been exhibiting together for over twenty five years.

Following on from our exhibition in The Esk Regional Art Gallery, 2019-2020, our group has decided to continue with the theme 'BIRD' 

We booked gallery NONA for 2022, but the flood and renovations meant the exhibition was postponed. We re-booked for 2024. In a way this delay was a blessing. It gave us plenty of time to develop a better series of works. 

For me the theme of BIRD and TOGETHER are tangled-up with the threats to the ecosystem.

I want the viewer to ask of themselves and our society : when will we accept that there is a symbiotic relationship between nature, humans and the environs, and that we are all the same when threatened by catastrophic conditions?

   

I tend to want there to be a concept. So to start, I look for inspiration.  For this body of work the inspiration started when my own adult children told me they were disinclined to have children.

They did not want to bring children into a world threatened by so many environmental disasters.

Combining this with the observation, that birds are threatened and undervalued - ideas started percolating.

1/ In a world threatened by catastrophic conditions not only will we loose our birds but we could also loose our children.

2/ Which birds? Just the threatened or should I include the common? 

    Australian or worldwide?

3/ Using photographs of my own children when they were far younger, I started the process with drawing children and birds separately.

  

When I came across this jigsaw, that my own children once adored, it gave me an idea. 

What if humans were physically and psychologically joined to birds? 

If what happened to one, happened to the other?

Through environmental storytelling I have decided to portray birds with human bodies, to signify that no ecosystem exists in a vacuum. What happens to animals, birds, vegetation and humans is inevitably tangled together.

3/ Cut them up and arrange so the amalgamated child/bird looks as if they are one species.

                   

     

Draw them with the chosen combination. Then decide

 

4/ Medium - Oils or acrylics?

5/ What will they be doing? Will the backgrounds highlight catastrophic conditions?

6/ Size? Color's? Atmosphere?  A reckoning?  Warning? 

    Or should I make the threat more subtle? 

ALCHEMY

 

ALCHEMY

We are travelers on a cosmic journey,

stardust swirling and dancing in the eddies

and whirlpools of infinity.

Life is eternal.

We have stopped for a moment 

to encounter each other,

to meet, to love, to share.

This is a precious moment.

It is a little parenthesis in eternity.

-Paulo Coelho

In this painting Alchemy, it's about the seemingly magical process of transformation, or creation, or a combination. 

When I think about the children that will live in the future, I feel that the world will desperately need magic, transformation and creation.

The girl in this painting is the gift giver.  She has a plant in her hand, representing new growth. The other is the storytelling. The recorder of history. 

The temple represents fire, earth, air, water and the unknown of the void. The sea represents strength, endlessness and hope. The mat shows new growth. The taking of tea represents harmony, balance, hospitality, and friendship.

The sky has a blush representing the world’s ability to reset. 

It represents HOPE

So, number one completed now to work the process to created 11 more !!

Artists statement

   

Growing up in Papua New Guinea, living on an isolated Island in Bougainville, PNG and then moving to acreage in Crossdale, Queensland, I have always felt fortunate to be able to observe and interpret the kaleidoscope of colors and designs, in habitat with areas of natural biodiversity.

 

I managed both an art supply shop at the Brisbane Institute of Art and an artist’s retreat in the beautiful Somerset Shire for over a decade. And both of these ventures allowed me to learn many creative, technique-based processes. Intaglio, Lino, mono and screen printing, have influenced the way I approach line, composition, design and color. Learning the processes used in sculpture, ceramics and jewelry-making has contributed to the way I process ideas and express spatial form.

I blend my appreciation for compelling narratives with the excitement of manipulating nature’s complex and transient structures. It was Max Ernst (1891 – 1976) who said, ‘an artist must have one eye on the outer world, while the other eye looks towards the inner world.’ And it is with this in mind that I create multi-layered paintings evocative of the landscape, while inserting an irrational or troublesome idea. However, unlike the melancholy of Ernst, I hope my works are a joyful experience, each a visual haiku of a memory I yearn to keep, while encouraging the viewer to connect with their own memories, to generate their own unique narrative.

Birds have always represented wisdom, adaptation, diligence, rebirth, and courage. All the attributes we will need if we wish to repair and maintain our ecosystem. By portraying birds and human children combined, I question, if birds were considered priceless treasures of worth, perhaps our relationship with them and the ecosystem would be more considered. Perhaps if we considered birds as being as valuable to us as our own children, we would apportion them more value—more care?

By using environmental storytelling I hope the viewer will not be instantly repelled by the horror of the concept, but take the time to look at the bright colors, scenery, toys, and allow the images - the time needed - for them to ask their one overriding question: when will we accept that there is a symbiotic relationship between nature, humans and the environs, and that we are all the same when threatened by catastrophic conditions?

Sharon Lee 2020-2025

I Miss Earth Worms. Do You?

                                                            

Main story - understory - in a monoculture worms and bugs no longer exist.

Bees, fleas, worms, germs,

humans are but one part of the ecosystem.

We have become the impatient species. Too busy to let nature replenish itself and too puffed up with our own sense of importance to acknowledge our utter dependence on its generosity.

- David Suzuki

                                                        

   

                     I MISS EARTH WORMS. DO YOU?     

      

                 

Travelling around the world and Australia, we have seen various monocultures. Large expanses of a single crop. And while these are hugely efficient for crop production and harvesting, they have devastating environmental impacts.

I MISS EARTH WORMS. DO YOU?

In this painting the child/birds are eating processed food stored in small plastic containers. The mat is plastic. There is no diversity in the crop in the background. A monoculture. A system recognized to destroy biodiversity of creatures in the soil, including worms.

You-Are-Here

Be the catalyst for a revolution.

Do the difficult things while they are easy

and do the great things while they are small.

 

EXHIBITION CROSSDALE4 Toogoolowah February 2018

Thrilled to be exhibiting with these talented artists.

Sharon Lee
A pouch is no protection from a bull-bar
Acrylic on canvas

Jane Harthoorn Williams

Reconciliation 11

Porcelain

Jan Williams
Dragonfly Lady
Cold cast iron and Polyester fiberglass

Ian Clark
Rift
plywood

Sharing of PLACE

We have always been aware of the need to make as little impact as possible on this piece of land we have claimed as OUr OWn. We have endeavoured to maintain the uncleared vegetation, while starting a re-planting program, so that we may maintain a diverse environment, that will sustain us all.

Some times it feels like a terrible swim against a current of - ' not my problem'

So when I was recently approached to submit some work for an online gallery, concerned with the study of Human-animal relations - A shared environment, I was more than thrilled to do so.


What an incredible diverse wildlife we are lucky to share this land with.

Animals, People - A share environment

10 - 13 July 2011, Griffith University, Brisbane


Some of the most challenging and exciting new work in Australian studies has emerged from the Fine Arts. In Honour of these human-animal artists, and their subjects, the Australian Animal Studies group has developed and online gallery. The gallery aims to promote the artists and the animal issues they care deeply about.

http://www.aasg.org.au/gallery

The Australian Animal Studies group and Environmental Futures Centre proudly present the 4th Biennial Australian Animal Studies Group Conference 2011 on; Animals, People - a Shared environment.


This conference will bring together animal theorists and scientists from a broad range of academic disciplines with representatives from non government and government officials from several nations and representatives from industry, to examine the interrelationship between human and nonhuman animals from cultural, historical, geographical, environmental, representational, moral, legal and political perspectives.

A very worth while study . . . .

Being at the Roo more often means we are able to leave out bird seed and other treats, of an evening and early morning. We have enjoyed the antics of the King parrots, pink galahs and white cockatoos.

The Wallabies have appeared more often too. We thought we had two regulars with babies in their pouches. No!, we have 8 mothers with joeys, all at different stages of development.
Amazing the difference a good rain makes . . . . . for everything.