Talented Mountains landscape Corinne Loxton is celebrating 30 years of her art in her new exhibition.
This is a rare opportunity to see inside her studio - to understand how her paintings are conceived and made.
Her Blaxland studio will be open to the public over two weekends, Friday, June 25 to Sunday, June 27 and Friday, July 9 to Sunday, July 11 from 10am-4pm daily or by appointment.
Federal MP for Macquarie Susan Templeman will officially open the exhibition on Saturday, June 26, at 3pm.
Loxton made the Mountains her home in 2012 when she moved from Sydney's inner west.
It radically altered her paintings from a place of homesickness for her South African heritage to a place of home in the bush.
"I had grown up at the foot of the splendid peaks of Table Mountain, in South Africa and spent my weekends on the water sailing dinghies, so the natural world permeated my consciousness from a young age.
"I like to recall learning mindfulness from my grandmother in the late seventies, well before it became fashionable - as she would guide me to stop on the Hermanus clifftops to pay attention and to breathe.
"Yet coming to Australia at the age of 15 literally threw me into a world I felt alien to. The light, smells and colours were all different. I felt lost; a lover of nature, yet unable to truly connect with the landscape I found myself in."
She said a "longing was answered" in the Lower Mountains.
"My daily walks in the bush with my dog gradually dissolved my fears of the bush and its hidden mysteries... As I started noticing the minutiae of the familiar bushland tracks, these places and their spirit became part of my artist's language. My paintings now speak about how particular places and experiences uniquely evoke the sacred, the magic and mystery of nature and the human condition.
"They explore both a universal connection to nature and the specificity of place, light, colour and mood. Where once my work was an expression of my homelessness, now my paintings truly are an exploration of self and nature as home."
The studio is at 12 Jamison St, Blaxland. Phone 0432 922 653 or www.corinneloxton.com.au.
