Artist Statement – Peta Rattray

I studied art at school but didn’t continue with my art practice when I left school.

Some 20 years later when my children were in primary school I found my way back to it.

Part hobby and therapy it became an overriding passion.   When I met Peta Trude, I knew I’d met a fellow traveler!

We shared a studio on the water in Middle Harbour, Sydney for nearly six years and loved every minute of it.   Some mornings we would turn up in our pajamas we were so eager to get there and work.   Our separate art practices flourished and changed dramatically in those years.  

I started painting on big canvases – big work – but taking things from my small still life and flower paintings along the way.    I am more interested now in composition, but colour or lack of it is still an overriding consideration.   Painting with a limited palette is such a challenge!

I still like to dabble in all mediums – oil, acrylic and water colour and sometimes mixing all three.

I have done many years of workshops at the National Art School in Sydney as well many residential art courses that give you time to slowly consider your work and application.

 

Artist Statement – Peta Trude

I have always loved colour even as a little person. My Kindy paintings, mostly done with fingers, were definitely the most colourful – every colour HAD to be used. I also loved to draw. Drawing was probably the thing I liked to do the most …. Little intricate drawings in every spare space …I loved getting a new book because there were a couple of blank pages at the beginning of the book and the same at the end that were definitely in need of drawings and paint! I was never very interested in what was in between especially at school .. those science books were definitely in need of something interesting and of course colour!

I was at boarding school for more years than I remember, and my favourite subject of course was art. I would spend hours drawing lots of little people, houses and patterns. One day my art teacher came up and looked over my shoulder. I thought I was doing well until she got a brush and put a huge paint cross over my work! She told me I had to use big strokes and be more creative – not just intricate little drawings. She never gave me good marks and so I just gave up and didn’t do any real until all my kids had grown up and I had time on my hands again.

I have been having a ball drawing with pens and bright colours for the past 10 years.

I still feel that I haven’t produced anything that I can say “at last I have got it” but I can’t wait to get home after a busy day and bring out the canvas’s, paper, ink, and pens.

I never have a dull moment in a day and will often stay up all hours in my own little world creating a new piece.

A group of 9 us came together about 10 years ago and decided to have an annual art show titled “9 Ante Portas” ( in Latin means “At the Gate”) from which we donated excess funds raised to a chosen charity. This annual event was a lot of fun and it got me painting again and even after the group disbanded I continued to paint and now all our beds and cupboards are filled with either finished or incomplete artworks! What do you do with it?

Then my friend Sandy invited myself and another friend of mine, whose name also happens to be Peta, to have a combined Exhibition in Roma. Hence the Exhibition title “RE-Pete”

This is a VERY big step for me … but no one will be able to put a big painted cross on any of my work but maybe one or two will get a red dot!

I have had a fabulous year spending every spare minute working on my art. I don’t believe I have done anything “amazing” yet, but it has given me much pleasure to have something to work for and hopefully I will get to look at one of my pieces one day and be able to say “yes” that’s it. Until then I shall just enjoy my time in my own little world and stacking more paintings under the beds …..

I hope you enjoy my paintings.