Louise Saunders; I have been extremely fortunate to have had a fabulous art career. I have not made my fortune but I certainly have had some fun and exciting experiences. Hopefully lots of people have a piece of my art and find great pleasure from it. My mum is a potter and I naturally started throwing and hand building, enjoying the art of raku where we would gather around a glowing kiln on a cold day and extract red hot pots and plunge them into cold water, sawdust and other strange things. I also made and taught the art of reproduction antique doll making. Their faces so exquisitely beautiful, mastering eyelashes was a fine skill needing lots of patience. With a love of the outdoors and going ‘bush’ at every opportunity I decided to try my hand at capturing small glimpses of nature in watercolour. I found native Australian orchids to be extremely intricate, beautiful and fascinating. I exhibited paintings at the first Australasian native orchid show and conference where leading botanists Mark Clements and David Jones inspired me to work on a collection of paintings. I naturally chose orchids of North East Victoria and set about finding them. Some orchid fanciers are weird to say the least and forays into the bush were interesting times. Over 3 seasons I managed to paint 80 species out of a possible 120. Not bad going and it was great fun finding them. The orchid collection was exhibited in the Regional Galleries of Benalla and Ararat. A move to Qld in 1993 saw a change from delicate flora to the more flamboyant native flora such as Banksia and the beautiful wildflowers of Qld. You could say my art career blossomed! I helped lots of enthusiastic artists set up the Botanical Artists Society of Qld and taught others this beautiful art form and to foster a love of plants and of painting them. I was fortunate to be asked to be illustrator for two UQ and Earth Watch expeditions to far north Qld and that was an awesome experience, miles from anywhere with mad researchers and scientists running about collecting all sorts of weird stuff for me to paint, from snails and land crabs to Aboriginal stone tools. While exhibiting a solo exposé of my work at Logan Regional Art Gallery in 1996 I was Commissioned by Ron Clark (athlete and developer) to paint the flora and fauna of South Stradbroke Island. In 1998 I took up the position of Artist in Residence at Couran Cove Island Resort on the Gold Coast. A challenging 4 ½ years, this helped pay for our two boys to go through university. Wow was it awesome, a stunning untouched sand island with beautiful happy holiday people. We painted butterflies, flowers, landscapes, sea shells, fabric and silk painting, painting then flying kites with kids, painting cocktail girls on coasters and I sold lots of paintings and merchandise. It was a peaceful magical place to live, an Idyllic job in paradise!! Sadly it got a bit too slow for tourism there but it’s back now as Ramada. I completed scientific drawings for a book about bats (I cared for baby bats all through these arty years too) and travelled to Borneo to find them and draw them with Dr Les Hall. Then my life was turned ‘upside down’ as I saw how bad the plight of bats was and I could not walk away. I founded Bat Conservation & Rescue Qld and fought hard to give bats some recognition for their valuable contribution to our fabulous natural ecosystems. I now return to my art and embark on a new journey to discover more of my talent exploring science through my art. Exciting!
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 02:05:46 +0000