Show Notes

• Belinda has been in lots of prizes and has lots of experience as an exhibiting artist
• She started early and has always loved art
• She was always ‘holding a pencil’ and loved art in high school. Had a turbulent few years and planned to do Graphic Design, ended up getting into an Art degree and stayed doing that and grew from there
• She did a desktop publishing course and started in a junior designer job
• Full scholarship at Julian Ashton art school
• Entered Mossman Youth Art Prize and won the drawing section one year and the painting section the next year
• Belinda had a job and travel planned so ended up doing all three
• Julian Ashton was very technical and structured
• Went backpacking around Europe with an artist friend – they would do a drawing every day, sitting around drinking beer and drawing and all on a shoestring
• Now is in more landscapes but was more interested in the human form before travelling
• Most landscape work now is strongly Australian – there’s not so much travel these days with two kids and design business.
• Belinda finds the Australian landscape infinitely fascinating and will usually take a trip to a place, sketch, take photos and then surrounds herself with little bits of information all around her in the studio and makes her own composition
• The painting becomes it’s own composition – some are more like the actual view than others
• She doesn’t know how it will end up until it’s done
• The painting is a work in itself and not necessarily the landscape you remember – it’s driven by other things like composition, the colours, how it’s all brought together and you make decisions on the way
• Felicity agrees there’s a point where the painting begins to speak back to you
• Belinda has been a finalist in a lot of big name prizes – some are expensive and time consuming to enter
• Felicity finds it takes a lot of planning and preparation and it’s frustrating that you can’t find all the information in one place
• Belinda gets notified from Art Almanac, social media, emails but it all adds to the confusion
• Some days you feel like you’re doing more admin than work
• Biggest challenge is the juggle – all the things I need to do for the week
• The phone always rings as soon as you’ve gotten past the procrastination and actually put paint on a brush
• Likes routine and deadlines and work better with structure but don’t so much any more
• Impossible to schedule in exact times – my design work had to take priority – it was the income
• Going to work towards having more routine now that she’s past some family struggles
• When things aren’t going well with your painting you get off track and demotivated
• It’s nice to be in silence sometimes… but it’s easy to slip into yourself
• Music is the best thing to get me inspired again and  warms up the space
• A lot of artists are selling through social media but I don’t really put mine out there until I have a whole body of work and then I sell out at an exhibition
• You lose a hefty chunk by selling via galleries with commissions
• Belinda came up with the idea for her latest exhibition, which Felicity was part of, called A Social Landscape at Dank Street Galleries in Waterloo, from an admiration of other people’s works on social media
• You tend to gravitate to people who work in a similar way to yourself
• A lot of the artists I was admiring weren’t represented and I couldn’t work out why
• Never met any of the artists in person – the first time will be during bump in
• Sometimes you don’t have a lot of contact with other artists in person so I thought it would be great to connect
• Depot Gallery at #2 Dank Street, Waterloo Sydney – it’s changing but a fantastic gallery space – only about 3-4 left open now
• Top Tip: You’ve got so much time and opportunities… apply for everything when you’re in the ‘Emerging Artist’ – put yourself out there
• Choose what you want people to see on social media and how you group what people do and don’t want to see
• Make contact with galleries from the start, even though it can feel intimidating
• It’s off-putting to gallery owners to be forced into shows
• It’s more difficult to organically grow a relationship when you don’t live in the big centres and that can hinder things
• If your art is good enough and you’re doing your background work, you will get noticed

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