A new art project at Newstead will invite people to try their hand at portraiture, capturing the faces that make up the local community.
The Newstead Art Salon In Your Face Portrait project has just received $3000 in grant dollars through Mount Alexander Shire Council’s latest community grants round with a series of 25 In Your Face portraiture classes now expected to start in July.
Local artist and Newstead Art Salon vice-president Bob Clutterbuck says it’s expected that despite COVID-19 restrictions the new series can safely proceed to plan, culminating in a portraiture show as part of next year’s Castlemaine State Festival.
“The COVID thing has made things a little bit uncertain but if it goes ahead as planned we will run a series of drawing classes and possibly painting classes as well, all based around the idea of portraiture,” Bob says.
“And the idea is for the people taking part to gradually build up an overall portrait of the town utilising the individual portraits of the citizens of our little hamlet.
“We’ll do a series of 25 classes with probably a maximum of 10 participants, with social distancing, and we’re planning to have the classes at the Mechanics Institute, which is a fairly big space.”
The new series is expected to start in July with classes to be led by several of the area’s accomplished artists.
Established artist and Art Salon committee member Ann Berg is among locals looking forward to participating.
“I think it’s an exciting opportunity for local people to be engaged with the arts,” Ann says.
While established artists are likely to be among the participants, Newstead Art Salon president Carol Porter says the classes will be suitable for anyone to participate in with the emphasis on acquiring new skills and no prior experience needed.
“It’s also about people developing their own skills,” says Carol who is well known locally for her screen printing artworks.
“We don’t really care how good people are. We want to encourage anyone to start doing portraiture,” adds Bob.
The classes are expected to run weekly and to each go for about four hours’ duration with local people encouraged to participate not just as artists but also as sitters for the project.
Those keen to find out more can email clutters.bc@gmail.com or carol8porter@gmail.com
