If you’re into drawing and you live in the Shire there’s no doubt that at some point you’ll chance across Ron Curran and the fabulous weekly Dynamic Drawing classes he runs with his partner Liz Friend.

The free-flowing form of short poses changing from one to another sometimes in seconds, and Curran’s occasional instructions to draw or paint left-handed, or with our eyes closed, or behind our backs, is almost guaranteed to bust through any art blockages you might have.

Model Ben, from a weekly Dynamic Drawing class in Byron Bay.

But although Curran says that he has “scribbled on anything I could for as long as I can remember,” it wasn’t art that originally drew him from Sydney to Byron but – as for many young people, the surf. “I came here when I was in my early 20’s,” he tells me. “I was one of those typical surfie kids with my mates in a Holden. At the time the police did not approve of the surfing culture, and on my first trip to Byron, they told us to get back on the train and get out of town! I did lots of surfing and travelling, but somehow I always gravitated back here.”

Curran still remembers his first Byron sunrise. “We were camped in a car at St. Helena, and I woke up in the morning and thought I was in heaven. I felt as if I’d just come to life – it had a magical effect on me.”  Such a magical effect that he determined then and there that he would settle permanently in the Byron region. A few years later he was offered by chance, to spend a year in the heart of the hinterland.

It’s hard to imagine anybody living permanently at Minyon Falls – deep in the rainforest and surrounded by National Park. Beautiful as it is, it seems a somewhat isolated beauty.   But it was exactly that beauty that attracted the poet Kenneth Slessor, who bought the old timber mill’s dwelling after the mill had closed.

A student’s free-form interpretation.

Fast forward to 1974, and Curran got the opportunity to rent the house from Slessor’s son Paul, whom he had known from Sydney. “When I got there, there was a goat living under the house, and all these boxes strewn around the place with papers falling out of them,” recalls Curran. “It was the middle of the cyclone year and we were always getting flooded in, and everything was damp, damp, damp. I was curious about the boxes and when I looked inside they were full of Kenneth Slessor’s poems – all just sitting around rotting. I told Paul that we had to save them and we did – hundreds and hundreds of original documents. They were all saved for posterity.”

‘I missed the land, I missed the weather…my elemental self yearned for the green hills of Byron Bay.’

Perhaps unconsciously the experience also reinforced Curran’s growing belief in the importance of an individual’s ‘mark’. It’s something he teaches with passion in his classes – explaining to students that the internal artistic force at work within them is the need to ‘make their mark’ – in the case of art, quite literally. “You can get all hung up about what is good art or what is bad art,” he says, “but in my classes what it’s about is self-expression. We’ve had many students who have gone on to make art a full-time career, but we’ve had just as many who have used the method of letting go to help them understand the next bit on their journey – or students who have rediscovered a love of art, or discovered that they are actually good at it when they were always told they weren’t.”

Of course like many teachers Curran doesn’t get much time for his own art practice, but with his partner Liz, whom he met through the classes eight years ago, and who still takes part, he’s hoping to get back into the studio himself.

“We moved to Melbourne a few years ago and lived there for two years,” he says, “and that was a really interesting process for me because Dynamic Drawing just took off – we didn’t even have time to enjoy the city because we were so busy running classes, and although it was very affirming to have everybody from corporate clients to school students love what we were doing I got homesick – I missed the land, I missed the weather. I actually got sick from living there – my elemental self yearned for the green hills of Byron Bay – and I realised that even if Dynamic Drawing could be a huge success in the city it’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to come to the Shire, run the courses with a new purpose and enthusiasm, renovate our house, and continue our lives here.”

For Friend, who met Curran through his classes eight years ago, their relationship has blossomed alongside her continuing creativity.  “When I started the classes with Ron I hadn’t done art since primary school,” she says, “but I’d always wanted to ‘be creative’.  With Ron’s encouragement and the nature of the classes with the short poses and Ron’s facilitaiton I found the confidence to ‘get out of my head’ and trust my instincts.” It’s allowed her to work sponaneously, she says.  “When I look back at what I’ve achieved over the past eight years, it’s really worked for me.  I feel incredibly fulfilled.”

Going with the flow – a student works on a series of quick sketches.

It was lucky for us up in the Shire that the couple decided to come back. Melbourne’s loss has been Byron and Mullumbimby’s gain – and since they’ve been back the couple has seen the size of the classes increase dramatically. “It’s not unusual for there to b e 40 people in a class now,” he says. “Ten years ago it was 15, when I started in 2000 it could be as few as five.”

I wonder if he has any idea – beyond the desire for people to partake in classes – why Dynamic Drawing has become so popular so quickly. “I think it’s because people are trying to return back to who they truly are,” he says. “There are more and more people making the change to move up here, who are wanting to explore their identity, and Dynamic Drawing is a way to creatively do this.”

Curran is proud of all his students, and respectful of the models who bare all twice a week, once in Mullum and once in Byron. For the past few months he and Liz have been planning an exhibition of their students work at Kulchajam in the Industrial Estate, which is taking place next weekend (Saturday July 4 and Sunday July 5). The group exhibition opens at 11.00 am on Saturday and includes a Q&A with Ron and a workshop on Sunday (people can take part or observe), which starts at 11.00 am at a cost of $20 per person.

“You know,” he says. “What I’ve discovered myself over the years – and seen in my students over and over again is that you meet yourself in drawing practice if you keep at it, and if you can do that it can change your life.”

Candida Baker

 Ron Curran’s Dynamic Drawing Classes run at the Drill Hall in Mullumbimby on Wednesdays and in Byron Bay at the Scout Hall on Friday mornings between 9.30am-12.30pm. The classes cost $20 and include model, music, facilitation and tea, coffee and biscuits.  Charcoal, butchers paper and A1 cartridge paper are available

For more information go to: https://www.dynamicdrawing.com.au/

Call Ron Curran on: 0421 101 220 or email [email protected]

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When David Corazza and his partner in life and business Peter Boyle moved to the Northern Rivers in 2011 to open The Channon Gallery, the gallery brought a fresh, contemporary approach to the local gallery scene and very quickly came part of the artistic landscape of the region.  Sadly however, the long-term partnership they’d planned was not to be, and after Boyle’s untimely death in March this year, Corazza not surprisingly closed the gallery for a while.

But this weekend, Sunday May 31 at 3.00pm, sees the re-opening of The Channon Gallery with an exhibition of Aboriginal Desert artists, entitled Mountain Devil Lizard’ , after Kathleen Petyarre’s painting of the same name. (Kathleen Petyarre: Mountain Devil Lizard’ , acrylic on canvas, 208 x 208cm, 2002)

Other artists that featuring in the exhibition include Shirley Purdie, Minnie Pwerle and daughter Barbara Weir, Josie Petrick Kemarre, Lily Kelly Napangardi, Madigan Thomas, Malcolm Jagamarra and Jack Britten.

Jack Brittan: Bungle Bungles, 120 x 169cm, acrylic on canvas, 1998

The gallery specializes in quality art work created by Northern Rivers artists and sources works from mid and late career artists from elsewhere in Australia.  The gallery also has in-house collection of high quality Australian Indigenous art from the Central and Western Desert regions of the country.  Says Corazza: “The guiding curatorial framework of this collection is rooted in Australian Aboriginal art with a modernist aesthetic with a leaning to abstract expressionism.  The work has, at its heart, the Australian landscape and the stories and spirit of the land, rendered in expressive brush strokes and mark-making.”

Provenance documentation will be provided for each art work sold. Any enquiries are welcome by telephone or email.

The exhibition opens at 3.00 pm on Sunday May 31 and you can find The Channon Gallery at:

52 Terania Street
THE CHANNON NSW 2480 Australia

t:  02 6688 6322
w: thechannongallery.com <https://thechannongallery.com>
e: [email protected]
fb: https://www.facebook.com/thechannongallery

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The first time I stood in front of a landscape painting by an Indigenous artist – Rover Thomas, in that particular instance – I experienced the oddest physical sensation. I felt as if I was falling into the painting. That was 40 years ago, and over the years I’ve become accustomed to a sense of visceral vertigo when I’m engaged with work which speaks specifically of Australian landscape. I’ve often wondered why it happens, and the closest I can get to an explanation is that to me the best Aboriginal painting has a curious 3D quality to it – even when the painting surface is apparently flat.

Standing in front of Michael Philp’s gloriously dark and yet somehow luminescent painting, Far Away, at his latest exhibition at the Lismore Regional Art Gallery I’m not surprised when I feel the familiar tipping feeling. From the night sky, to the infinite ocean, to the tiny white boat in the foreground, this painting pulls the viewer into the story – the tiny, almost invisible human looking back towards the distant shore, and according to Philp: “…the discomfort I’ve felt when I’ve been in boats at sea looking back to the shoreline so far away.”

Michael Philp: Far Away, acrylic on canvas, 2015

The title of this exhibition is Cosmology in Me and it is divided into two distinct sections – the drawings of that title, and Philp’s most recent paintings from his series My Saltwater Murris. Discomfort is a concept with which Philp is familiar. A Minjungbal man of the Bundjalung nation, born to a white fisherman and a Murri woman, Philp grew up in Midjinbil country between Tweed Heads and the Gold Coast. His white fisherman father, a violent drunk beat Philp’s mother, “for more years than I care to remember,” he writes in his biographical notes. The violence of his background and his detachment or isolation from his traditional history were, in large part, responsible for his fall into addiction. After 20 years of drug and alcohol addiction an art therapy program began a cathartic process which has taken him back to his family and his country and allowed Philp to find his artistic voice – a voice that in My Saltwater Murris pays tribute to his fisherman father, and to his reclamation of his own identity as Bundjalung.

Michael Philp: #1 Cosmology in Me series, 2003-2005, courtesy the artist and Saltwater Murris.

The paintings have haunting names – Patience My Son, My Soul Beacon and Far Away amongst them, and that haunting quality is echoed in the works themselves. In the paintings there is a sense that night, rather than day, is the keeper of the soul; in the small but potent drawings, the images explore the not insignificant idea that we carry not only our own emotional world within us, but also the entire universe.

Philp uses dots in some of his works judiciously, but to startling effect, as stars, or as shards of light, or rays of energy. To me they often resemble rain – as in the wonderful My Heart’s Beacon, in which a tiny black figure on shore is connected to a small white boat with a larger, white figure in it by a grid of pure white dots on a deep black background. Of the painting Philp writes: “When my father would go out fishing at night I would worry about him being ok, and I would send a little prayer out to him, imagining him surrounded by light.” At a curious first glance a viewer could see the painting as something as simple as someone in a bath, or shower (imagery repeated in Patience My Son), but with the knowledge of Philp’s troubled past with his father, and his long journey from disconnection to reconnection, the painting takes on layers of emotional meaning.

Michael Philp: My Heart’s Beacon,
acrylic on canvas, 120 x 100 cm, 2013

Reading too of Philp’s early troubled relationship with his son’s mother – and the almost inevitable damage that alcohol and violence wrought upon the next generation – is as disturbing as it is inspirational to discover that Philp has spent the last 15 years repairing not only himself, but his relationships with his family. Should Philp’s story be something that we need to know before we can properly absorb these paintings? Probably not – as with all good art the paintings speak for themselves, and yet at the same time it is the sense of undercurrent within his work that makes it so powerful, so ultimately redemptive. There is absolutely no doubt that Philp could become a major voice in the Australian art world, and I, for one, look forward to falling into many more of his paintings.

Candida Baker

Philp’s work is currently part of the NSW Aboriginal Art Parliament Prize Touring Exhibition, with exhibitions coming up in Musswellbrook Regional Art Gallery, and Coonamble Outback Arts; and My Saltwater Murris will be shown at Hervey Bay Regional Gallery next year.

My Saltwater Murris is showing at Lismore Regional Gallery from April 18 – May 23.

You can find out more about Michael Philp’s work here: michaelphilp

Lismore Regional Gallery: lismoregallery

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Bernadette Curtin: Reef Forming

At the Lone Goat Gallery in Byron Bay ten artists have come together to express their love of all things oceanic, and the inspirational power and beauty of the sea through their art.

When the Lone Goat Gallery, right next to the Byron Library, opened last year – named after the goat that still roams the headland up by the lighthouse – the artistic community in the region breathed a sigh of relief that at last they had somewhere in the Byron Shire to exhibit in a purpose-built space.

There doesn’t seem to be a better way to show off local artists’ work than with an ocean-based exhibition, given that the gallery is only a few hundred metres from the beach, and in Ocean Ten, seven local artists have been joined by three artists from Sydney, New Zealand and the UK respectively to present their connection and responses to the ocean, based upon their particular geographical location.

Denise Morden with Ocean View series

Through the artworks of the participating artists, Ocean Ten aims to lead the viewer through a variety of approaches and mediums, expressing each artist’s focus and inspiration from the sea, and some of the Shire’s best-known artists have rallied to the ocean’s call.  The artists include:

Denise Morden’s sublime vistas of sea and sky

Alan Morden’s luscious minimalist abstractions

Jeanette Macdonald’s sculptural silk pieces reflecting pattern and rhythm

Merrilee Pettinato’s depiction of the wesak full moon over the Byron Lighthouse,

Simone Ellis’s printed silk scarves inspired by lighthouses and navigation lights

Michele Aboud photographs waves at night to capture the continuous momentum of the ocean

Rosemary Dunstan unravels the relationship between human life and the ocean through our subconscious feelings

Rowena Parkes loves the ocean and the shoreline and her chosen locations are Broken Head, Toberua Island, Fiji, and Fraser Island, Queensland

Tricia Nicholson, a marine biologist, brings her knowledge, experience and love of the sea to the creation of ceramic penguins and dolphins

Bernadette Curtin’s paintings are playful reconstructions of reef formations and their inhabitants.

Ocean Ten. Left to right: The Meeting, Sounds of the Ocean and Ocean View Series.

In this area, where there is already such high ecological and environmental awareness, the intention of this group is to collectively bring awareness to the issues of ocean ecology, the delicate nature of marine ecosystems and the sea creatures which inhabit them.  The rhetorical question underlying the exhibition as a whole is how we can better look after the marine world, and Ocean Ten take their audience along the shoreline and to the ocean’s depths, to shine light on the importance of heightening our awareness about appreciating and caring for our oceans.

The exhitbition is on at Lone Goat Gallery, corner of Middleton and Lawson Street, Byron Bay.  The Gallery is open seven days a week from 10am–4pm.

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