Sue Kalab Artist

"Yesterday Today & Tomorrow"

12/5/2022

Time passed since the previous post and that painting morphed into "Yesterday Today and Tomorrow".
I offered it to raise donations. And here's Steff Crowe with her painting. She has a great feel for the natural world and my art - she "gets it". Steffie's been a tireless campaigner to preserve the Gelorup Forest from the bulldozers, and she watched as this painting developed. She made the best bid at Saturday's memorable garden party, raising funds for the critical legal challenge in the Federal High Court this month. I love to make people happy.

In this painting Banksias, Jarrah, Marri and Tuart reach for a bush butterfly, the Painted Lady. the messy randomness of the Australian bush is what I endeavoured to paint. It is forest ecology: simultaneously complex and simple.

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Mandorla 2022 - My Experience

4/12/2022

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I was pleased

I thought I'd share this chapter of my art career.
You see, I achieved a long-held dream by entering a painting in Mandorla 2022, the national religious biennale art award. Visit website https://mandorlaart.com/2022-mandorla-art-award/ for background, and to see some exquisite art. Here's my entry “Yesterday, today, tomorrow. The oracle has spoken”

This was my submission
Tell us about the work you are entering.
Climate change accelerated. 2019-20 Australia responded with Black Summer Fires. Our tired, worn-out Earth. 2020 Covid came like an oracle. The world went quiet. Industrialisation ceased. Earth took a monumental deep breath as carbon pollution paused bringing starlit skies and views of the Himalayas. Nature sang. An opportunity for metamorphosis, where Earthlings contemplate spiritual mysteries and rebirth. A chrysalis emerging as a butterfly. Our dwindled botany reaches to a bush butterfly.

Tell us about you and your arts practice.
When Covid struck, the go-go world went quiet. It was curious the way my mind freed as commitments dissolved, leaving delicious time for my art. I watched and painted migrating shorebirds. I’m a naturalist and conservationist. I walked forests and beaches.
My art is realistically contemplative. I’ve a passion and philosophical perspective for the beauty in our natural world. I‘m inspired by sunlight on water, stars, the moon, shadows, birdsong and the less explored places. www.suekalab.com

It brought a smile to my face when I finished this work and its complex, concise writing with its story. I'm a firm believer there is a Higher Power, that Intelligence which created the universe and share this view with native cultures world-wide.
It makes me happy to have achieved this painting but I do wish it could help bring healing to our planet Earth.
Almost 300 entries submitted from across Australia, and 42 selected. So, I stand with 250 others and know I am not alone in being disappointed. A silver lining to this particular cloud is that I can share this with you

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February 23rd, 2022

2/23/2022

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"Fringe Lily - the Tufted and Twining
& Finds from the Forest Floor"

Commissioned by friends for the 1st birthday of their grand-daughter Lily, who is beautiful and dainty as a Fringe Lily.
I knew my friends' love for the Jarrah Forest should be in the story. The forest is intrinsic to the world of this pretty native flower.
Forest is represented by finds from the forest floor, with Marri and Jarrah fruit and leaves, Bracken, Lichen, Swords-edge and a Peppermint twiglet bringing in timeless movements of the sun, stars and moon, summer and winter, seed-setting and flowering.
Nature’s unobtrusiveness is represented too, in that it is easy to overlook precious leaf litter, essential to forest health and to keep biodiversity singing. As I painted, I thought of my friends watching out for this small wildflower, the fringe lily, tjungoori, each spring, djilba, and their love for their first grand-daughter Lily.

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February 23rd, 2022

2/23/2022

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"The Soft Whisper Song of Silvereyes - Gift for the Gardener"

This is a little painting for Father George Harvey, a priest friend, a historian and a gardener.
I delivered the painting to his gracious home.
He is a man of the Old World, where things matter.
He loved this little painting. I gave it to him to say thank you for the great good and kindness he has given throughout his long life.

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"Nature sings and speaks its secrets"

11/19/2021

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Imbued in mystery, the natural world of Australia speaks its own language. These relics of beach shells and a twig from an ancient Jarrah bears seed to give rise to new forest found their way into my work, creating random shapes on a page of traditional French Arches torchon watercolour paper.
Painted with enduring Winsor Newton watercolours, it is professionally framed using museum-quality conservation materials to ensure its longevity. The painting, framed, is 35 x 70 cm.

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I wish I was a Bird

3/30/2021

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I love watching birds. Each is perfectly designed for what it has to do. It's fun to identify birds and birdsongs, animals, trees, wildflowers and bush orchids. Birds have different cries for breeding time, calling territory, warnings of danger, and just plain happy, glad-to-be-alive songs. I wish I could song and fly!

This is a juvenile Rufous Whistler. It was in the Tuart forest several years ago perched on a native peppermint, Agonis flexuosa. With a loud call, their song is distinctive, easy to recognize by a trained ear. One of my favourites.

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Light and Darkness

1/11/2021

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One thing my art depends on is nature in its natural state.
To this end a big concern of mine is the proliferation of artificial night-light.
There is a 2019 Australian scientific weblink which shows this is increasing across the world by 2% every year.
Here you will read of the many, many species of plants and animals - from the microscopic small and insignificant to the mightiest whales and trees that need naturally dark nights and the pull of the moon and moonlit nights.
The report is beautiful in itself and quite 'illuminating'. Do take a peepo.
https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/consultations/f9d7b873-29a3-4ae6-8278-3c3b64ee5a9f/files/draft-light-pollution-guidelines.pdf

The report is still in its 'draft' stage, yet to be adopted by our Federal Government, which is disappointingly slow (and this is widely known by those active in the environmental world) to act on nature conservation matters).
Should we be alarmed? I know I am.

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Here's your day maker

9/15/2020

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These words made my day!
I love it when someone "gets"my work, as did Joanne.

" . . . I spent a delightful hour or so discussing painting and life in the studio of Bunbury artist Sue Kalab. Sue's delicate and gestural watercolours capture the contradictions inherent in the environment. The medium itself, with its elements of control and release, discipline and change, is a metaphor for both the fragility and unpredictability of nature, whilst the work captures the fleeting moment but also endurance and timelessness. Each work gives us a glimpse into Sue's passion for the natural world, her commitment to the environment, and our need to pay attention to what is quiet, small and still in this world."

Dr. Joanne Baitz, Director Bunbury Regional Art Galleries, August 2020

"Finding the world in a leaf"

"Let all of life be there"

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In my studio . . .

6/1/2020

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In my studio, my place for reading, writing, thinking, listening, being on my own. The act of lighting a candle and a fragrant essence brings calm. I glance around at collections gathered across my years of wandering, finding, retrieving, studying, painting . . . this is my homeland.
Come and wander around with me.

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The Inner Beauty of Trees

2/18/2020

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Listening to Trees
Aura of great cathedrals. Misty secrets and sharp statements.
The advantage of solitude, in which we can walk or talk, or be silent naturally

"Prince of Tuarts" - Ancestor Tree"

We need the tonic of Nature to smell the whispering leaves.
To learn all things mysterious and unexplorable.
Trees give us calm trust.
We are this Earth

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I was pleased

"The Soft Whisper Song of Silvereyes - Gift for the Gardener"

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