​A last cuppa in the sun on the side steps with Bird and Harrie is signalling the end, before the last spurts of fitness and photos take over the rest of the day.  
 
With the dried mandarin peel left for the next fire maker, a little painting is entrusted to the walls to continuing hanging with all the others artist’s works here.  And with this token I want to say sincerely - thank you - to so many who have enabled me being in this Residency and made my time here so rich.
 
Thank you to The Squatters Residency, The Annexe, The Foundations, Harrie Fasher Studio, Harrie Fasher, Bird, T C Overson, Rich and Kellie Evans, Annabel Mason, Andrew Neville and the Ant Fitness community and Portland lovely locals too including Cheryl, Monique, Su and Bess and her family too.
 
Thanks to my workplaces for my absenteeism.
 
And big thanks to my beautiful family.  
 
Thank you.
 
I head back into the thick of life again.

​There is a cold snap in the air as I head out in the morning sun, I’m feeling a little sad for the end of the residency is nigh.
 
I started a last painting and returned to others dotted around the walls.
 
I missed Art in the Park today, a monthly regular on the family calendar, but I get a visit by my eldest and her love.  Maybe they’ll live near here, near us one day. We take a drive looking at this gorgeous town and then out near Mount Piper coal powered station too – it’s just 4 km away and I wonder what the future will hold for their lives.

​My acrylic paints came out to today with the 25-postcard pack bought at the local art supply store. In the studio, at the kitchen table, in the sunroom, the bathroom and the big bed/studio room I have been encouraged by the imaginary creatures in the peeling paint and paper.  Some quick responsive studies resulted.  And then I stuck them up in-situ.  Totally refreshing after labouring over many of my other works here.
 
There was also a pop into The Glen Museum here at The Foundations.  Some gorgeous collection material piqued my interest as Fay leads me round.
https://thefoundations.com.au/experiences/the-glen-museum/
 
Beside the Museum my heart was held still looking at the memorial of the forty-five workers who died just going to work at the cement works, associated quarries and mine. Awful.
 
I know the plan was to batten down the hatches, but I had to head away again with a quick visit home to see family that came with the trip to the local government election polling station back in the Bathurst Regional Council area.  
 

​I woke totally happy today.  I just love this residency.  I talked lots with loved artist friends Jen and Wart and sorted some upcoming Cementa Festival get-together plans. Annabel gorgeously popped back in too.  I set myself the task to finish the self-portrait and the self-portrait then painted back into the next painting.  I did stay up till after midnight but just didn’t quite get there.  My self-portrait just took a b’zillion times longer than I had planned it to take. So, I’ve put the painting in a painting aside for ’Ron.

The mirror ended up in the sunroom and there was self-portrait action all day, except during the boxing class or the studio visit by another gorgeous local and then there was lots of talking on the phone with family too.

 A lot of creature stuff has happened today.  
 
Starting with the early-bird fitness session Bird (the dog) got in a good lick at an opportune moment when I was down with weights in my hand.  Thanks Bird. 
 
Then, I realised the hall stand I was focusing on in my small charcoal drawing had become some kind of long-legged creature like being impersonating the faces and creatures all around in the peeling paint.  I do love a bit of pareidolia – perceiving something more on some nebulous stimuli. 
 
In preparation for painting my self-portrait, I moved the furniture around a lot today too.  It is a thing I do. I was thinking of painting a painting of myself in a painting and was trying to figure out where my self-portrait painting would go into the next scene.  I was also moving the bathroom mirror around in each room to figure out where to paint myself as well.
 
Some more studio visits by some locals happened and I popped over to the local art supply store.  I couldn’t help myself when I saw the little artist postcard pack  – so fab to have stores like these in small towns – Portland does punch above its weight. Not too sure what will come of these cards, but they are totally cute.
 

​ 
Coupled with the morning boxing fitness class at 9 was a view to some cow action out in the paddock.  Not every residency has such bustle as this.
 
After drawing by the lake with its morphing reflections alongside fellow artist Annabel Mason (who as an aside makes a very yummy quiche – thank you Annabel!), and before a drive through the back lanes of Portland (totally recommended if you are coming here) there was another walk with a local in The Common. The walk felt familiar today, like I was walking around the woodland at home checking out the hollows and burls as I like to do.  I recognised some faves - flurries of flowering Hardenbergia amongst the white brittle gums as a family of white winged choughs call each other.  The most unusual tree caught my imagination too.  Think elephant foot base extending to a hand with elongated fingers reaching to the sky.  I think of possibilities of how it grew over time and of others who have met and carried stories of this tree-being in their minds too. 
 
In the Squat today too, my little painting included a scene with two of my large drawings in it and a very welcoming rug.

Usually, it is fabulous waking up here with the light coming through the window – a slow snuggled contented wakeup, but last night’s wines were not the ones that help you sleep - it was a challenge to get up for the early bird fitness class this morning.  
 
Following planking to finish off the routine this morning, I was then stretching to hang my Annexe drawings next to the window in the second bedroom/studio.  These drawings became one on the wall after some consideration of hanging them with a gap, together or apart.   They don’t join perfectly but have a repetition in the middle which I like coupled with the blue artist tape that seems to have become part of the drawing too.  I work some more into the charcoal of this drawing.
 
My other big drawing of this large studio/bedroom in the Squat is now finished too with the inclusion of my Annexe drawing depicted within it, and with a second sheet extending the drawing into its floor and beyond.
 
My Instagram feed is inundated with fellow artists posts visiting Orange Regional Gallery’s current exhibition of Peter Godwin’s ‘Space light and time’.  His attention to the edges reminds me of Fran O’Neill’s guidance there too in her Drawing Marathon show-and-tell of some works that enliven her.  I see also that gorgeous local Tim Winter’s has an exhibition there.  I can’t wait for a visit to see a little of both their worlds.  Regional Galleries are soooo good.
https://www.orange.nsw.gov.au/gallery/exhibitions/

​An unplanned trip took me out of the Squat today again.  It did enable the loveliness of seeing family again, but in the same breath, it is good to come back here to drawing and painting by myself.  There is some talk of extending the residency a little (alongside some repair work here) and a possible return too.  I have my hand up so high.
 
Dinner at the bowlo with some locals meant Nok’s yummy crispy fried eggplant was on my menu and then Harrie and Bird were in for a studio visit.  She generously suggests extending my current drawing - like I had my other large ones when drawing as part of Fran O’Neill’s drawing marathon recently.  Thanks Harrie.
 
As I head off to sleep, I say goodnight to my bed friend favourites in the peeling paint of this space that I love.

​I had to leave the Squat for much of today. 
 
Hill End called – for I was opening the exhibitions of Heather Dunn’s ‘Response’ and Hui Selwood’s ‘From the Studio’ at Hill End Gallery.  In the weeks leading up I had visited Heather’s studio, and it was good to see Hui’s studio too today and catch up with some Hill End happenings.  Congratulations you two on this terrific exhibition.  Their exhibition runs until 1 December 2024.  If you have a chance to get up there, it is a treat to see their works chatting to each through mirrored lines and forms.
https://www.instagram.com/hillendartscouncil/
 
After a detour home, I was back at the Squat getting my body moving with the start of a much bigger drawing and consideration of how to hang and possibly combine my large Annexe drawings too.
 
Left image credit: of Hill End Art Gallery opening by Lenore Dunn

Finished today are a couple more little drawings.  One of these had me imagining the rug on the cupboard, a friendly beast, through the lit door frame view. The other of these had me move into the emptiness of the spare studio/room where the light falls softly through the draped curtain.  The characters on the ceiling of this room are a great match for the walls.  Looking up is kind of like cloud watching with character forms gaining life in the imagination.  I have stories that go with them -like that of the shy bilby-eared naked-turtle.
 
Along with my now regular health retreat number, I walked with a lovely local in The Portland Common – a 650-acre woodland where birdlife abounds. Thinking of it, I thought too of the walk with fellow artist residents, from my camac residency in France, where the forest up the hill held an old oak, hundreds of years old.  There, the quiet was peppered with pops for it was hunting season.  Here the birds make constant conversation.
http://www.nicmasonartist.com/blog/archives/11-2017
​

​Ducking next door to the Annexe for two sessions with Ant Fitness today - who knew the Squatters was a health retreat?  
https://www.antfitness.com.au
 
I feel 95% plus complete with a couple of little paintings today.  Almost there. It is a challenge to capture light and resolve works. One of my paintings has ended up buttery and the other has some saturated yellow light in a room beyond.  This made me think of the work of Caroline Walker who depicts women working - often through window scenes.  Such fab work - so, I google a look of some of her beauties again.

​Nails and hooks on the walls around have beaconed my little works to spots where they just belong. Returning to yesterday’s little morning painting, now that the light is streaming in again at that time, meant that I could finish where I started.  This little work then found it’s place on the wall where the floral wallpaper recedes showing three layers of peeling paint.  Next, it becomes part of the view in my latest drawing with the morning light billowing through the window. I imagine I could stay here for a very long time and not be sated for a view watching the changing light move around the room.
 
Today I found out a different interior work of mine has been selected for the inaugural Interior Art Prize at Weswal Gallery.  Looking at the finalist list my name is next to Alison Mackay’s.  We have had a couple of two-person interior exhibition’s together and she has an exhibition coming up at Olsen Annexe.  I’d head there to see it and cheer her on, but I am here, so I am not. Go Alison!
https://www.instagram.com/p/DAC90rMtmE3/

But I do head next door to the Annexe here where my day was split by joining the walking group with Ant Fitness.  It was good to view back to the Foundations buildings from the other side of the limestone quarry turned colour-saturated dam.

​The layers throughout this place are fodder for the imagination.  I’ve been finding faces and creatures in the torn wallpaper and peeling paint and in the accumulation and reduction of stuff.  So many things have been pulled off the walls here leaving their ghost prints behind. Flicking the books here, I’ve left open a page on the photographic work of Sophie Ristelhueber to think more on it.  Traces of the past mix with her present where in one series she adds images of children on vacations in the 1950’s into the scenes of empty and abandoned homes.
 
My second little painting – another interior started today has been left till tomorrow morning’s light check-in again.  Talking with my artist cousin Kiata on the phone - we talk about working towards a show together – likely an interior themed exhibition.  She is fabulous so I am excited.
 
My youngest teen with his friend in tow schooled today from The Annexe next door, which meant a lot of ducking back and forth.  Some local friends popped in – curious of the old cottage and the work I am doing here, so a tour was on the cards. My Ugg boots were kindly dropped off by my partner and without his hotness remaining, I’ll be turning the electric blanket on tonight.
 

​The Squatters has more than enough in its interior to hold me for a long time.  I’m here for two weeks and I’m thinking I’ll batten down the hatches and try to not leave too much.  But I must confess I’ve already been back home once. Next door might pull me a little too. In the lead up to this residency I thought I might return to drawing in the Annexe (another of The Foundations buildings).  I was there recently with a bunch of gorgeous and brilliant artists during Fran O’Neill’s Drawing Marathon.  Check out up coming art workshops through Harrie Fasher's 'Community and Workshops' page.
https://www.harriefasher.com.au/workshops-community

But drawing there now is not looking so likely, for a gym – Ant Fitness has just relocated to the Annexe (due to development works happening elsewhere at The Foundations).  My plan was also to be open to influence when here, so I’ve asked my youngest teen to bring me my runners.  He’s staying tonight, cooking dinner with his friend for us and he'll be distance ed schooling from The Annexe tomorrow.  It’s so good to be in a life friendly hearty residency - open to artist’s lives and circumstances. Thank you, Harrie, T C, Rich and Kellie.
 
I’ve drawn more with charcoal today and pulled out the oil paints.  I’m working small – intimate little works of interiors.  Today’s work had me open the front and back doors to let in the light into the hall – the view through the view from where I have set up my easel.  The wind howled but still I felt nestled inside. Open on the coffee table is one of the books I borrowed from the library – ‘Edward Hopper light and dark.  It’s left open on ‘Sun in an empty room’.  I’ve been watching the light and dark move through each room here at the Squatters.  It is energising being here to look, think and respond.

The most I’ve ever seen together - thirty plus gang gang cockatoos farewelled me before I left home.  And here blue-sky blossom is blowing in the warm winds.  It’s Spring and it is the first day of my residency at The Squatters at The Foundations, in Portland on Wiradjuri land, central west NSW. Living only half an hour away, I have driven the road here many times, most recently with my youngest to his things and his friend living here.  On this journey, my mind was taken back to my arrival at my camac residency at Marnay-sur-Seine in France.  We drove the meandering roads through forests, over hills and down dales edging closer and closer to the imposing nuclear power plant vista.  I felt my anxiety swell in the pit of my stomach. The view on my drive here seemed reminiscent, though this time it is Mount Piper coal powered station popping in and out of the vista. Residents I met there in Marnay-sur-Seine told me of their protests pre the nuclear plant and later of halting a chemical plant development near their homes. Here the opposition government has announced their proposal for Mount Piper to be one of seven coal power stations to transition to nuclear power plants. In Marnay-sur-Seine (and many of France’s villages, towns and cities), they live with the first Wednesday of the month midday civil defence siren. It is a practice drill, month in, month out, year in year out.  With France’s 56 operable nuclear reactors, (the country with the second most reactors) there are about 4500 sirens placed throughout their country.  It’s their norm. 
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_defense_siren#:~:text=It%20consists%20of%20about%204%2C500,8%20port%20single%20tone%20siren.
 
Here, I hear just the creaking of the floorboards, a critter in the roof and the occasional woof of a town pooch, with today’s roaring winds drowning out all else.  I’ve settled in straight away.  It’s my first solo residency venture.  All others have involved other artists doing their own things beside me.  I have loved them (the residencies and the people), but I am also totally up for and eager to be doing this one solo. Inside The Squatters, my charcoal drawings by night have begun.

​It was so lovely to visit Tim and Lynn Winters Lineage opening at the Peisley Street Gallery in Orange on the way home.  It is an exhibition of the works of artists in four families of partners and siblings and across generations.  
 
Post the Ironbark Residency, I play with photoshop to see if the series of photos I took in the hall without a tripod could be stacked and straightened up in some way and I finish off this part of my blog.
 
I am questioned by my cousin, Kiata - thinking about my family ancestry in these parts, did it influence my work?  I think so.  It influenced my thoughts of this place and my responses to it, thinking about past presence and my presence here.  I was really influenced by the now – by spending this time with my fellow residency peer Therese and of all the interactions and conversations with the locals, whilst thinking of the past.  In being open to influence in this residency, I played with ideas that surprised me.  I am not sure that I could have ever envisaged setting up site specific work with a plastic sheet. 
 
Coming back from this residency has also prompted me to head to my bookshelf to pick up a book I bought a while ago. I am now reading Stephen Gapps, Gudyarra, The first Wiradyuri War of Resistance - The Bathurst War 1822-1824.  I see on the map that the Binyup people of the Wiradjuri nation lived in the region. 
 
I think of the elements interacting whilst I was there, of the mouse that nibbled my banana, of the water spewing forth unexpectedly from the wall tap and piddling to dry in the shower, of the fridge door opening and not just once, of the fan expunging its blades, of my autocorrected notes of hidden to forbidden, of the radio grey noise of the middle of the night, and of the plastic sheet breath and dance throughout this place.  
 
I am so thankful to all at the STAA who have been so responsive with their care of this place and us here.  I am enlivened to keep working on the projects that I have started there.  With just five nights there it went like the blink of the eye. I am enthused to head back there.  
 
The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA.
 

​Listening to my footsteps, I walk through the hall and from one room to the next.  I think about the thousands of footsteps that have traversed through this building since its opening in 1880. I set up my tripod (a side of the road rescue) and photograph and video some ideas around presence in this place.  
 
Women were forbidden to enter.  I know back then, it was only men allowed here in the bar, but I still wonder if my great great grandmother Maryanne ever stepped foot in The Railway Hotel.  We are shown the small room for women in The Railway Hotel. I imagine her daughter-in-law Edie, my great grandmother in Yee Lee’s general store (owned and operated by Wong War Lai and later by his son) down the road. I read Juanita Kwok’s 2019 paper Wonderful Wellington: The Longevity of the Chinese Community in Wellington, New South Wales. I think about the descendants of the Chinese diaspora living today, who like me, and my children may too be sixth or seventh generation Australian from these parts.
 
It's our last day here at the Residency.  It has been wonderful to share this time with Therese.  She’s shared with me some of her responses to researching Jessie Hickman, The Lady Bushranger.  Jessie would have been eighteen when my Granny was born.  I haven’t managed to return to reading the book I bought with me - Rebecca Wilson’s Kate Kelly, the true Story of Ned Kelly’s little sister – giving air to Kate’s story from this male-oriented period of history. Kate was found dead in a waterhole further west near Forbes in 1898 ten years before my Granny was born.
 
Later I stand looking over Burrendong Dam where my Granny’s ashes were spread and her sibling’s graves rest under the water.

The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA.

Today, the fifth day of the residency at The Railway Hotel, are our public presentations. 
 
Therese reads her poetry.  In centring her experiences with the history of this place, I am all ears.
 
I set up my first public site-specific art installation in The Travellers Room of The Railway Hotel where I have been working. 
 
As flat as a pancake is how I would describe the plastic sheet this morning after dancing with the drafts since my arrival. I wonder, what will it be like for the installation at my presentation later today?  I charcoal some more and lay my drawings and paintings out in conversation with this studio set up and some images on my laptop of the sheets in motion.
 
Generously welcomed later at Kinkara studios, we feast on figs from a local tree, take in the old wooden ironing board alliance with the old printing presses and edge on our seats for the poetry reading.  Thanks Tim, Lynn and Margrete too - you make this place in time so yummy.
 
The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA.
​

A third painting is on my easel.  This time it is a view through the doors to what was once the bar here in The Railway Hotel.  
 
The drafts in The Railway Hotel are intense.  
 
It’s difficult to stand on the plastic painters sheet supplied by the STAA to protect the floors. I have become so distracted and taken with the sheets that I have been setting up site-specific installations.  I watch the sheets’ breath with the drafts and imagine their forms as beings in The Railway Hotel rooms and hall.  
 
The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA.
​

The remains of a wedgetail eagle and the bones of a boar dot The Common where butterflies rise and ironbarks regenerate.  Talk of an endangered purple pea piques my interest and I recognise the gold-digging churn of the land.  It looks so familiar to where I live now – another recovering landscape from gold rush times.  And I think of the stories my granny told of family members finding gold in their backyards.  They lived near the legendary Potato Patch field with its tales of alluvial gold dug up like lumps of potatoes.  That is all now under Burrendong Dam.  
 
I am taken by the meat safe in one of the rows of the open-air museum.  It’s like a funny character to me and kind of out of place with all the rusting farm equipment.  Inside in Boehmes Hall is another clutter of domestic helpers from the past.  I like some of the newer additions too, signalling the ongoing use of this place – like the turquoise chairs stacked waiting for the next meeting.  I snap a picture of a mixmaster, who has done their duty – no doubt many Country Women’s Association cakes came through their beaters.
 
We skirt around a derelict house, with its dilapidated outdoor dunny and mound of cement encased bottles. An upside-down sign with ‘the skin club’ adds to our unsettling. 
 
Thinking about this sign, I think of the ghost signs in town too - like the one atop what was once Yee Lee’s General Store. 
 
Today there is more local cheer from Marian at the café, Janet popping through from the Post Office next door, and the sunset from the Nunnery – many thanks to Tom for the tour and hospitality.
 
And two little paintings are now on the easel as well – the portrait of the fan and of the light down the hall.
 
The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA.
​

​In the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of something not right. As I raised my hand in questioning, no breeze was felt. On adjusting my vision to the darkness of the unfamiliar, a perplexing strange amiss had befallen the fan.  In my acceptance of whatever oddity had occurred, I turned off the fan and went back to my stupor provoked by my month of persistent late nights.
 
This was the first night of my Ironbark Residency.  
 
On arrival we had been welcomed generously by the STAA in the form of Tom, Marian and Ian.  Therese my residency peer and I had laughed a lot and stayed up late.  We threw ourselves into the unsettling of this place. With vivid and eerie stories abound, I felt enlivened, and my goosebumps flared. She enacted her first dramatic impromptu spoken word performance.  It was a ripper.  
 
The morning revealed the drama of the night.  Plastic shards were splintered over the bed, within my bedding and even expelled under the door gap at the other side of the room. 
 
The fan blades had exploded. 
 
I am unharmed.  
 
There is no question – my openness to be influenced by this place and time has been roused.  I am going to start with a portrait painting of the fan.
 
The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the STAA.
 

My Ironbark Residency 2023 is fast approaching.  It is situated in Wiradjuri Country at the Railway Hotel in Stuart Town, previously known as Ironbarks. My plan is to be open to influence whilst contemplating some family stories linked to the Stuart Town surrounds. And I’ll take my regulars - some paints and canvas’, charcoal and paper.  
 
This photo of four generations of women in my family - my older sister, my mum, my granny and my great grandmother is one that I’ve always loved.  It was taken by my father. My great grandmother died in Lithgow a couple of years before I was born, not far from where I live now.  Family stories of her and of the lives lived of my ancestors have always intrigued me.  These three forebears of mine all became single mothers. Their stories, encompassing much grief along with tales of survival, are the backdrop to my life stories.
 
My only grandparent present during my childhood, my gorgeous granny (who as an aside loved very ripe bananas) is up the back on the left in this photo.  She, Doris Newton was born at Pine Park in 1908 not far from Stuart Town.  Doris' birthplace is under what is now Burrendong Dam. Life was precarious then.  Eight of Doris' nine siblings died whilst just babes.  They are buried under the Dam where my Granny's ashes were later returned. Granny told stories of the twin babies warmed by the fire and when she was just eight years old hitching up the horse to the sulky to drive her mum who was in labour to Wellington Hospital to give birth to her tenth sibling. It is thought that these devastating peri-natal deaths may have been the result of an Rh Factor incompatibility. Looking at this photo with my great grandmother Edith (Edie) nee Eden suspended in time, I feel a gut-wrenching sense of sorrow for her. The pit of her grief is unimaginable to me. Oral family stories are that wanting to endure no more loss, Edie left the valley with her two girls, Doris and her little sister Amy, leaving her husband, my great grandfather James (Jim) Newton.  
 
Jim who was also born under the Dam, worked as a labourer at the Pine Park property.  His birth in 1874 was during the gold mining rush at Burrendong reported in the Sydney Morning Herald to have commenced in January 1863.  He would have been just 6 years old when The Railway Hotel was built and Ironbark Railway Station was opened (still in operation today as Stuart Town Railway Station). Thousands of people including diaspora from China flocked to the district over the next half century (with only hundreds remaining in Stuart Town today). His parents, my great great grandparents Maryanne Hickmott and Thomas Newton were married nearby in Wellington in 1866.  I have read of records telling of members of the Newton and Hickmott families travelling to the region in 1863 through my mum Marilyn Mason’s genealogy research on her ancestors.  There is convincing evidence that Thomas Newton’s parents, my great great great grandparents Thomas Newton of the Mary II (1822) and Barbara Laurie of the Buffalo (1833) were transported to Australia as convicts.  Maryanne’s parents, also my great great great grandparents Sarah and James Hickmott came to Australia as assisted migrants on the Maitland (1838).  
 
Through this one family lineage, I am a sixth generation Australian of convict and migrant ancestry from Britain.  This is part of the story of how I am living and working in and now in an artist residency in Wiradjuri country.  Wiradjuri peoples resisting invasion on their lands is well documented.  My ancestors arrived in this region only forty years after the first Wiradjuri war of resistance (the Bathurst War 1822-24). This colonial heritage of mine abuts horrific truths of genocide, virus decimation, war, massacres and stolen generations of Wiradjuri peoples. Personal questions of how to live and work in Wiradjuri Country today with its continuity of Wiradjuri peoples and cultures are continual.
 
The Ironbark Arts Residency Program is co-produced by Orana Arts Inc and the Stuart Town Advancement Association (STAA). I am looking forward to the residency, to sharing with locals, to thinking and creating and also meeting the other residency recipient Therese Gabriel Wilkins who will be working on her own project at The Railway Hotel.  Thankyou Orana Arts and the STAA.
 

​Looking down at my concrete studio floor, there’s stuff always.  Things fallen.  Things placed.  Things left.  Things appearing.  
 
There are flood worms and there are moth bits.  I didn't place these there.  But then again, when I say this, I am only thinking directly. The plethora of life beginning and ending seems on steroids with La Niña. It’s outside, but also it comes in, appearing on my studio floor post another inundation of water. Crazy and beautiful. They add to my stories, the detritus of life and the things to be done.  Not least, these remains make their presence in two of the paintings within the series of nine works of mine that I painted for the Grey Foundations group exhibition at WAYOUT Art Space, a Cementa Initiative in Kandos.

This mini-series and exhibition nod to time and place: the transitional years since graduating from Fine Arts Honours at UNSW and into the lockdowns of 2020 and beyond and it is about coming to Kandos too, on Dabee lands, Wiradjuri Country, with its cement stories. These nine works have been curated into the exhibition with nineteen artists from this UNSW Honours cohort. A couple of works painted in this mini-series take me back to my honour’s year spent with the artists in this group.  It was 2019 when I picked up the banksia cone, discarded by the side of the studio at my Bundanon Artist in Residence program.  Here, in my painting as in life the banksia cone seems creaturely to me.  In another work, is a painting within a painting. This practice has become an iterative thing for me to do.  This painting in a painting is of one of the works painted during that honour’s year, of some wombat poo in my beloved measuring cup ducks. It takes me back to the critiques we had throughout our Honours year, of other’s thoughts on my attempts and the generous sharing that happened. I loved playing with the paint in this one, scraping back with a pallet knife some of the concrete floor I had painted in this painting, kind of like leaving a print in concrete as it sets. 
 
My boots are present in some of these works too with the orange peel drying for the fire; the jar with the dried remains placed in it years ago by my cousin Kiata; some of the origami cranes deftly made by my youngest; and the nanna blanket crocheted by my children’s great gran for our wedding. When the works have these boots at the bottom of the scene it’s clear to me when I am looking at them that it is I that is looking down but when the works rotate another story comes to the fore with the boots belonging to someone else and the narrative opening up.
 
And these works do rotate.  Some of them anyway.  When I took them in for curation into the Grey Foundations exhibition, I placed them on the floor. It was a buzz when they were spinning around to find their way up for their install into  the exhibition.  Some were on their side and some upside down in relation to how they had been painted. I’m happy with how they landed.  I loved that the process of creating them extended through to this install play with others.  Thanks go to Emily Roebuck who Curated this exhibition, Michael Petchkovsky from WAYOUT, and LuLu Smith who came for the install ride with the cohort. And then the works were up and like the other artists works in the Space, all offer some form of connection with others during the install, at the opening and beyond.  
 
Being a part of this whole Grey Foundations thing has offered and enabled ongoing connection for me with many from this cohort, despite these years of pandemic change. It’s been a joy to see what the other artists have created and written. The collective reflections in the Grey Foundations catalogue are moving and beautifully culminate in hope and positivity “Despite starting out into an uncertain world, we are still here, we are still artists and that is something to be celebrated”.

by Nic Mason

​The hearty feedback I have been afforded has been a treat. And it’s been loads of fun to have friends make the trek out this way. Thank you to everyone who has visited my exhibition Cycle at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (BRAG), attended a talk or participated in a workshop during this exhibition period. It's a wrap.
 
What’s next you ask? Happy times that some works from this exhibition are heading into private collections. Those making their way back to me, may be considered for something more, perhaps another outing in an apt group show or submitted for a prize – only time will tell.
 
And for me, I’m thinking about how I can expand on some of the terrific development opportunities provided by BRAG. During this exhibition, I have given several walk-through talks, workshops and media interviews. When these were in the pipeline, I bit the bullet and had a session with Camilla Ward from The Creative Voice Studio a fellow Orana Arts Inc Studio Co!Lab Member. Both are absolutely and completely recommended by me if they pique your interest. With my next exhibition scheduled for Project Gallery 90, I’m keen to experience and share something more when it’s on too.  
 
BRAG have been amazing in their coordination and support. It has been splendid to see what has spun off from BRAG sending exhibtion notifications out. One example is the online exhibition write up by Artist Profile magazine
 
“ … Using painting as her vehicle, Mason thinks through they ways that we can live with the land, shaped by it as much as we are compelled to care for it. At once personal and philosophical, gently gendered and totally disruptive of any binary mode of thinking, these works knowingly upend genre conventions in playful, imaginative, and expansive ways, drawing on a knowledge of the natural world from within and without the Western history of painting.”
 
Big thanks must go to all the staff and volunteers at BRAG for their expertise and support, Tracy Sorensen for writing the catalogue essay, Clare Lewis for photographing the works and Cr Margaret Hogan for opening the exhibitions.  And many thanks to Create NSW for supporting this project too. 
 
This program is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.