NGAIRE JOHANSEN
Ngaire commenced watercolour painting in 1991 having just retired from a professional career as a secondary school full time music teacher. Ngaire did a few classes with David Taylor and Malcolm Beattie, and workshops with Margaret Cowling and Joseph Zbukvic. She successfully exhibited at the Victorian Artists Society and at various exhibitions on the Mornington Peninsula. She also attended life drawing classes with gifted artist and teacher Patrick Moss at Linden Art Gallery. She considers his tuition to have had the most influence on her development as an artist, as he teaches his students to see the form and shape of the subject rather than to draw subjectively. "His phrase 'feel the form' remains as a guideline for all my figurative works, whether drawn from real life or from the imagination."
In the early 2000, Ngaire relocated to the Mornington Peninsula. She was finding watercolour rather limiting at this stage. The size of her paintings increased as well as the desire to experiment with form, shape and colour, so the transition to oils was a natural progession
Her personal response to the Peninsula environment gave rise to an output of paintings based on the arctosis plant with its curly grey foliage and prolific bright flowers, the trunks of dead ti-tree which often take on fascinating biomorphic shapes which can be wonderfully brought to life with the addition of colour. These works were a combination of objective responses to the subject and purely imaginative responses, resulting in a tendency towards Surrealism.
Ngaire continues to experiment with the sensuous curved form of the ti-tree while move into other subject matters that encompass concepts of spirituality, mortality, duality and matters of human interest. Her most distinctive images based on ideas of relativity and quantum mechanics, although not her largest body of works, are certainly her favourite theme. Other media she works with are acrylics and mixed media on synthetic paper
Ngaire's involvement in the visual arts extends beyond her work as a practising artist She runs private life drawing sessions at Sorrento Activities Centre (in the Seniors Hall) under the blanket of Studio Sorrento and is a member of the Peninsula Pleinair Artists. Ngaire was a tour guide at Heide MOMA and McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park for ten years but now focuses entirely on painting and her newly formed community theatre group Studio Sorrento Players.
Solo Exhibitions:
2007 Frankston Arts Centre - "Grand Master" purchased by Dr. Joseph Brown
2008 Whitehill Gallery, Dromana
2009 Brunswick Street Gallery, Melbourne
Group Exhibitions:
1990 Group exhibitions at the Victorian Artists' Society
1991 Group exhibitions at the Victorian Artists' Society
2003 Sorrento Rotary Art Show - watercolour "Highly Recommended "
2005 Sorrento Rotary Art Show
2006 Sorrento Rotary Art Show
2006 McClelland Guild annual exhibition
2007 Sorrento Rotary Art Show
2009-10 Represented by 775 Art and Craft at Red Hill
2010 Peninsula Art Exhibition, Rosebud Secondary College
2009 Cancer Council select exhibition
2010 Flinders Art Show
2010 Blairgowrie Yacht Squadron Easter exhibition - received "Commodore's Prize"
2010 Temple of Illumination, Ringwood
2010 Studio Sorrento
2011 Blairgowrie Yacht Squadron Easter exhibition
2011 Studio Sorrento
2011 Flinders Art Show
2011 Rob Macnamara selective exhibition (f.i.e.l.d.)
2012 Studio Sorrento
2012 Blairgowrie Yacht Squadron Exhibition (judge)
2012 Oakhill Gallery
2012 Camberwell Rotary Art Show
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