Three artists are gathered around a long expanse of clean, glaring white paper. The paper is stretched across rocks at the back of a beach. Sand sneaks into their shoes and sticks to their knees as they kneel in the hard sun.
This is Mark George, Julie Nash and White Bluff Project instigator Ray Rixon, about to make the first marks on a collaborative, large scale drawing for the White Bluff Project exhibition, to be held 22 January to 20 March 2021, at Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery.
They are embarking on an adventure with a roll of paper 1.2m x 5m and a handful of charcoal and inks plus ochres sourced on site.
The three of them are using not just traditional artist’s brushes, but also sticks, grasses and sponges sourced from White Bluff itself. The site is as much a part of the drawing as the artist’s and their interpretations.
Ray explains: “rocks and vegetation provide a base for frottage and we are also tracing around smaller stones and incorporating their markings in the first stages of the artwork.”
‘Happy accidents’ are inevitably incorporated into the surface. See the gallery of images below for detail.
“The current plan is to respond to the vertical sweep up the face of the headland from the shoreline to the sky – water, rocks, sand, shoreline, shrubbery and exposed clay/shale, tree line, sky – in a series of three large collaborative drawings,” explains Ray.
The artworks will be completed in a number of sessions, both in studio and onsite, but, for now, flick through the gallery below for a taste of both the process and the product.
And be sure to stay tuned for more updates as The White Bluff Project develops.
