Art lovers are about to have a unique chance to catch an afternoon floor talk with Malmsbury artist Gabrielle Martin, discussing her exhibition Through the Long Grass at Castlemaine Art Museum on Saturday.
The exhibition celebrates the landscape near Martin’s home in the Goldfields town of Malmsbury.
The land was reshaped in the 19th Century by civic rail and water projects and grazing that serviced the goldmining industry.
In this month’s artist talk, Martin will discuss the influences and ideas behind her work, and the role of memory, imagination and observation in her landscape paintings.
The local artist will also look at parallels between the landscape around Malmsbury and the orchards and paddocks on the outer fringes of Melbourne when she was growing up in the 1970s.
Wild fruit trees, weathered pines and dry fields of grass are common to both, as well as endemic gorse, blackberries and briar rose that resist the best efforts at control.
It is a compromised landscape, but one the artist feels deeply connected to.
She will also talk about the role of the figure in her recent work and how it has evolved from her portraits.
The floor talk happens next Saturday, July 30 at 2pm with further info available from CAM.
