May Featured Artist

Mel Castleman

Title: Cocoons
Medium:  Found organic and manmade materials
Location: Chan & Naylor

Artist statement

Cocoons represent hidden potential, latent power, a resting time of unseen change between phases of action, growth, birth, death and destruction.

This is me and my hidden connection to the land.  I am white skinned, grew up in town.  Not indigenous and not from a farming family but I feel a strong connection to the land, to nature.

This “making” is Nichol’s Point Cemetery and the surrounding bushland.  From an early age I liked this area and would ride my bike out here from town to Bruce’s Bend.  Since then friends and family have been buried at the old cemetery.

This is my search for connection and validation of belonging.

May Featured Artist

Win Moser

Title:  Home is where the heart is
Medium: re-used prints, various papers, wax

Location: Premier Art Supplies

Artist statement

Playing around with wax, old prints and drawings, following a recent encaustic workshop, led me to create the basic shape that universally symbolizes house/home.

Not every house is a home, and a “home” is much  more than a house – home is where the heart is?

My use of paper reflects the fragile nature of home. Many people have never had a safe home and many homes become unsafe places to live, particularly for people such as refugees seeking asylum on our homeland, who live in detention while being “processed offshore”.

May 2016

May Featured artist

Mark Pettet

Title: Reconnect

Medium: Acrylic paint, texta, cut paper, etching

Location: Arts Mildura 41 Deakin Ave

Artist statement

Life has a strange way of coming full circle and my reconnection with Art has been exactly that.

The image of the closed and open  box depicts the struggle I have had to not simply be a bystander with Art but how to become engaged again. Through the development of ArtRageUs studio I have often had to think outside the box to inspire the Artists I work with, but failed to break free of my own restraints.

The images are a combination of old and new, reflecting vibrant, colour and sharp lines, uplifted by the vibrant artwork that surrounds me each day. Hopefully now I can take a step out of the box.