Tags: Australian Artist. Artwork. Brisbane. Bribie Island
Jazz music is the predominant theme of January’s Artist of the Month exhibition at the Bribie Island Community Arts Centre. Viewing Artist of the Month Rod Horsburgh’s mixed media artworks, one immediately notices he loves jazz music and the people who play it. Rod finds his subjects at Jalla’s Cafe in my own town of Woodford, where on Saturday afternoons local musicians fire up their instruments to strut their stuff. Coming in a close second to jazz are Rod’s depictions of landscapes and old buildings on and around Mt Mee where he lives.
This being also my old haunting ground, I can fully appreciate the views Rod has committed to paper. What’s impressive about this artist’s drawings cum paintings is his use of line, smudging, then scratching into them as if to underscore the aesthetic he finds in his subjects. Equally fascinating is Rodney Horsburgh’s past as a Courier Mail press artist – joining Queensland Newspapers in 1964. Those of us of the older generation may well have seen his work in Queensland papers before some of us stopped buying them at the onset of the Internet Age.
As Artist of the Month coordinator, I helped Rod mount his pictures on the Arts Centre wall for that purpose with hands down my favourite drawings being the turkeys. These wretched creatures, I’m told by Rod, have wrecked his garden. Perhaps that’s why he chose to draw and hang them on the wall: Wanted, dead or alive! I’ve also strolled through Rod’s turkey infested marvellous magical mysterious Mt Mee garden. It’s the sort of place one expects to discover pixies hiding amongst the overgrown everything.
Visitors must be cautious of wandering into the giant spider webs festooning the pathways. Better than Christmas streamers, they only add to the garden’s charm. Watch out for Rod’s future workshops where participants will learn his techniques of line, smudging, scratching and I’m sure many other worthwhile ways and means of capturing interesting subjects on paper. Currently, his work is on display for the month of January with a free Artist of the Month talk followed by morning tea each second Friday of the month. The Bribie Island Community Arts Centre can be found at 191 Sunderland Drive, Banksia Beach, opening Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 4 pm. Phone 3408 9288 for further information.
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