Traffic Jam Galleries : Carole Foster and Katherine Wood

Katherine Wood: Riding Loyalty/mixed media and oil on canvas 100 X 180 cm
Katherine Wood: Riding Loyalty/mixed media and oil on canvas 100 X 180 cm

The current small, delightful exhibition by featured artists Carole Foster and Katherine Wood has just opened at the Traffic Jam Galleries .

Carole Foster, originally from Wangaratta and now living in Dromana, Victoria, has for this series painted vibrant, alive portraits of birds (budgerigars , ducks and others). She has travelled and exhibited internationally, mentors artists and is a part time curator/artistic director with a large gallery.

Often she draws inspiration from the Australian outback. However her current series is called Naughty Birds– an avian answer to the Archibald Prize perhaps?

Clear, simple, often neutral colours are used as plain backgrounds. The bird portraits jump out at you- there is an intense aura of alertness.

Foster uses vivid dynamic colours, fresh lines and strong composition in her paintings. The birds are depicted as ruffled, cheeky and bobbing. The detail in the feathers is amazing.

Most of the works are medium in size, a couple are hung in the window facing outside in combination with Wood’s work. Some of the works use strong diagonal lines and cropped in ‘close up ‘.  Others are ‘full length’. A personal favourite is the cheeky Dame Edna like portrait of a Black Cockatoo entitled I’m Yours.

Katherine Wood’s works are very different – beautifully nuanced, captivating landscapes. Wood is based in South Africa and also has international connections as well as extensive Queensland links. At times using multimedia some of the canvases appear shaped and moulded because of the extreme swirling thickness of the paint.

Her series is entitled Sublime and seeks to express ‘the infinite journey’, encompassing a natural flow of the past, present and possible future in landscapes. There are some stunning, subtle landscapes with a very sensitive use of line. Sometimes they look like pen and ink drawings but they aren’t.

Usually in each painting there is some human or animal figure included to give a sense of scale and a link to the viewer.

Wood has included artist statements- some are poems– for most of her works. Her works aren’t representations of specific places. Rather her paintings are of vast coastlines of interior landscape, sea and sky showing the various atmospheres of each.

Deceptively calm seas, gloomy ominous clouds, rocky promontories and vast expanses of blue skies are depicted.

Wood says “My art is not about reproducing reality; but capturing the energy that creates it.”

The current exhibition by Carole Foster and Katherine Wood at Traffic Jam Galleries runs until Thursday 20th August.