Last Saturday Shane and I reunited briefly with two old friends, fellow artists who once upon another time lived in Melbourne but now live and work elsewhere:
Maryanne Coutts, currently Subject Leader in Drawing at the National Art School in Sydney, and
Kathryn Ryan, a full-time artist who is now based in her home town of
Warrnambool.
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| From left: Loris Button, Maryanne Coutts and Shane Jones outside the Art Gallery of Ballarat |
Thank you to
Loris Button, another fellow artist and mutual friend of Maryanne, for organising our reunion lunch at the
Art Gallery of Ballarat cafe. (Thankfully Loris is based rather nearer to us in the neighbouring town of
Creswick).
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| Left-right: Loris Button, Maryanne Coutts and I |
After our lunchtime meeting, Shane and I headed for Warrnambool and the launch of
A Quiet Place, the
Warrnambool Art Gallery's 20 Year Survey Exhibition of Kathryn Ryan's work. The show is superb, charting the breadth and depth of Kathryn's connection to place. As the exhibition so compellingly testifies, the most significant and enduring of those places (which include Dubai in the UAE) remains the one in which she was born and bred. The exhibition, which is highly recommended, runs until 22 November.
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| Kathryn Ryan and I, snapped during the opening night of her survey show, A Quiet Place at Warrnambool Art Gallery |
