The online shop is open again. There are paper moths and bees and small moth paintings for sale.
Press the button below to go to the Big Cartel shop or you can access it from the SHOP link in the menu. Please have a browse. If you have any queries or requests - please contact me. thank you. Les
Assorted paper moths for sale - Lesley Kendall, 2019
Exhibition at The Side Gallery, Red Hill
29 August - 13 September, 2019
garden.
The exhibition was a wonderful experience. Leesa Hickey, gallery owner, and Laura Brinnin, curator, were a great team to work with. They displayed the work beautifully in the space.
Thank you to everyone who visited the exhibition and purchased work. I feel so grateful.
Thank you also to the five women - Joy, Kate, Suzanne, Susan and Sharon - whose Brisbane gardens inspired the work. Below is a photo of Joy (in the black skirt) and her friend Jeanette visiting the exhibition.
Now its onto new work.
Beautiful in May
The rain is falling, the Salvias are flowering and the garden is full of birds and bees.
“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed and every morning revealed new miracles.
”
Painting Begonias from Sharon’s garden on a rainy Autumn day .
“An ordinary visit to a beautiful garden always creates an extraordinary time!”
The prettiest succulent garden perched on the edge of a concrete driveway.
Those colours - a mix of lilac, sage green, grey ,the blush of pink……
I will be busy here for a few more weeks. Happily.
The art exhibition last week was a lovely ending to two years working in the Brisbane Botanic Gardens as artist in residence. The exhibition was held in the Richard Randall art studio nestled in the Mt Coot-tha Botanic Garden . All the watercolour and ink paintings were done in the garden during 2017. Sculptures of birds, insects and plants made out of paper, ceramic and natural materials were also on display.
I will miss the beautiful Brisbane botanic gardens. They have been my inspiration for two years.
Now to clean my studio and get ready for a new project working with nature.
I had the wonderful opportunity this year to collaborate with Brisbane fashion designer Sarah Garrett-Hodoniczky of the fashion label RANT clothing.
Combining the artwork of selected Grevillea specimens at the gardens and digitally printing them on pure cotton, a range of comfortable summer styles have been designed by Sarah at RANT for the new range.
To view the range please go to RANT clothing website - www.rantclothing.com.au
All garments are 100% made in Brisbane.
(Photographs taken in the Mt Coot-tha Botanic Garden by Todd Hunter Mcgaw)
Summer is here.
“Go to the object. Leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Do not impose yourself on the object. Become one with the object. Plunge deep enough into the object to see something like a hidden glimmering there.”
I have been spending time by the lake in the Australian Plant Section of the botanical gardens walking and writing and staring at the reflections on the water .
“All pictures painted inside the studio will never be as good as the things done outside”
Cooler weather ...it"s time to head into the garden and paint.
“Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree. ”
The Arid Zone......Thorns....During the month of April I enjoyed the arid zone with it's beautiful Aloes and Euphorbias and the succulents in the Cacti and Succulent house. I also enjoyed meeting Prue who looks after the succulents,the fern house and the tropical Dome.
The Temperate Zone......Petals....... on the other side of the lake the Camellias and Magnolias are flowering. What a beautiful sight!
For the month of April I will be in the arid zone.......
I am meeting Steve,the supervisor of this area of the botanical gardens, on Friday. I will be focusing on Southern African succulents and have some ideas for 'arid zone inspired' sculptures. I'm excited!
“‘So they drove again, Vivien sitting up and looking now, but as navigator only, letting the desert scratch it’s own thorny poetry on the enormous moon’”
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each.” —Henry David Thoreau
Monday mornings I go early to the botanical gardens to collect specimens to paint during the week. I carefully select, cut and take them back to my studio. They are placed in a row of glass bottles on my work table. Each day I select a single flower to focus on. I try to simply paint what I see .
“when you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else.”
pastel drawings of this week's specimens hanging in the studio.
Mount Coot-tha was home to the Turrbal Aboriginal people for tens of thousands of years before European settlement. After settlement the summit was cleared, leaving a single Eucalpyt tree. This gave rise to the name One Tree Hill, which remained in place until 1880, when the area became a public recreation reserve. The name Coot-tha comes from the Aboriginal word ku-ta meaning honey. This area was where the Aboriginal people collected honey from the native stingless bee. Coot-tha means ‘place of honey’.
