Hope, Vitality and Colour. If there is any artist who is the personification of their latest exhibition, it's Millthorpe artist Ada Clark.
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Her exhibition at the Orange Regional Gallery features 11 works curated by long time friend Nina Machielse Hunt who gathered images from her own collection and from other people who had purchased her works in the past.
"These are some of my best works in the exhibition and feature images only from around the central west, not from my European collection," she said.
Now in her early nineties, Ms Clark has been to all four corners of the globe creating artworks that she believes brings happiness to the viewer.
"There is enough sadness and darkness in our lives," she said. "A lot of modern art is an exact mirror into our society. My picture framer of 45 years said to me once that I'm a painter of happiness."
Since beginning her artistic career in New Zealand she has sold an uncountable number of works both original and reproductions, and still gets the same buzz at a sale as she did with her first one.
"It means that there is something in the work that really resonates with the person buying it," she said.
Ms Clark said that she draws inspiration from the landscape and that viewers should approach her work
"The scenes in my works aren't perfect depictions of the landscape I'm in at all. When I go out I know what it is that I want to say, emotionally, and I look for something through which to say it.
"I'm not dominated by the subject so in the end the painting will look nothing like the subject."
This week she travelled down to Wyangala Dam to capture the clouds and rolling hills around the immense body of water.
Like many artists, describing the work that now sits on the lounge room floor left her struggling for words.
"It's all about the distance, the clouds and I can't really describe it. That's why I'm a painter and not a writer.
"I love being in nature because you get immersed in so much more atmosphere and usually a certain colour or shapes will trigger what it is that I want to say."
Hope, Vitality and Colour is on at the Orange Regional Gallery until Sunday March 6.
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Mark Logan
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
