For the LOVE of fruit & veg
Size of Work 1. *
2.5m x 1.5m
Medium of Work 1.
Charcoal & pastel on paper plus installation
Price
POA
An installation incorporating the tools of the garden trade supplied by Blue Mountains Food Co-op and a large scale drawing in charcoal and pastel depicting fruit and veg coming to fruition! The artwork will be passionately and lovingly creating in situ at the Co-op.
Rachel Szalay is a celebrated Blue Mountains artist. She closely connects with the natural, human and psychological environment through her artistic practice as an actress and in the last two decades as a fine artist. She completed a degree in Visual Art before successfully auditioning at NIDA and starting her acting career- and her knowledge and mastery of techniques from both acting and fine art are intertwined. She has contributed to a number of exhibitions and has had solo shows in Sydney, Victoria and the Blue Mountains. Gaining representation within the Blue Mountains arts community as well as in the books “Artist’s Observed” by Carole Hampshire and “Luminous Colour” by Linda Hibbs. Her commissioned work extends to private and commercial collections in Australia and overseas. Pragmatism and inspiration shaped her choice of the Blue Mountains as a location for living, studio and discipline.
Her artistic response is sensuous, surreal, inquisitive but also deeply affirming. The materials used, particularly pastels, require the surety of technique and the skill to develop and work the surface- and always the exploration of the pastels ability to both veil and reveal. Her work may focus on and magnify a macrocarpa flower with filaments of saturated colours and dense with pollens, or alternatively discover the character of a human face. The lines of which reveal passion, resignation and inner life. Anthropomorphism is evident in her response to the abundant wildlife of her Blue mountains setting such as the amazingly idiosyncratic Gang Gangs and Bower Birds, the sensuality of the natural environment and the beast within.
Szalays’ choice of mediums reveals her love of substance and respect for tradition as well as the ability to innovate and push. She jokes ‘she hasn’t made friends with acrylics’, preferring mediums such as pastels and oil that require a high degree of mastery to convey the layers and surreal images with conviction. Szalays’ creations combine traditional materials, their cultural history with her deep sensual and psychological response to the mythic Blue Mountains landscape but also to the small town human communities inhabiting it. For this artist, the traditional pastel medium is explored in a way that makes everything old new again.