Hello and I hope everyone is taking care.

This is my first newsletter for the year.

As part of the Mornington Peninsula Drift Arts Festival I will be one of the exhibiting artists for Peninsula Studio Trail open studios

29th/30th April 10am - 4pm. Click the image below to plan your trip, or email me for my studio details, as my address is not published. I will also have some works at Silverleaf Artbox in Merricks for Drift Festival. The exhibits will support Zoe Bastin's performance work 'How we Rise'.

In other news... 

This next body of work emerging is taking me on a circular journey of memory in time. A field visit to Yuin lands left me deeply affected. The 2020 wildfires had been through this area and sitting with and observing the changes on the land and river

This river land holds a deep love story in my life, stored away in my cellular memory, and has come to me and dreams, many times. These motifs that are emerging appear as visual metaphors; rebirth, seasons, annihilation, recovery and regeneration. I was moved to write a little poem.

Sweet River 

you have come to me in dreams 

a life ravaged 

over and over, you have rebuilt yourself 

and

we meet again 

both

older and carrying stories

of wildfires and regeneration

an abandoned child 

whose wondrous reckless thoughts

await audience

a lyrebird’s morning medley

to say be witness

 I am here

and made of many beautiful things

soft memory breath of mint bush

prickly vines, tearing at skin

a thicket of weeds upon your banks

a casting aside

though you remain faithful

oceans of deep time

held in embodied memories 

a softness

of deep fresh water

you remain

the incoming 

the outgoing 

ever present 

tide 

forming 

me

A circular river story

'Colonial Ghost Tree', 76cm x 76cm.

This is the painting that I tried, unsuccessfully, to paint in my early 20s.These European plantings all along the river flats on Yuin country seemed to survive the wildfires of 2020.

While back on this land I would wake to the lyrebird call, emerging from sleep at dawn to drift into liminal imaginings. On the trip I mainly worked in watercolour and made some small plein air works. I had grand plans to get back there in April but Covid had other plans. Next up, in May I am off to the Murray on an artist's camp with giant river redgums on beautiful lagoons.

On the last day of the Peter Booth retrospective, I got out to Tarrawarra Museum. Peter was a lecturer during my studies at VCA and although a quiet, gentle man, there would not be one student who was not in awe of him. Images below.

              I hope to see some of your faces at my open studio. Have a great Autumn.

Sarah. x

Visit https://www.sarah-bell-artist.com/

 I hereby acknowledge that I work on what always was and always will be the land of the Boon wurrung/Bunurong people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to Elders past and present, as well as to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the wider community and beyond. Indigenous sovereignty has never been ceded.

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