Dear Member,

Let me start this newsIetter by wishing you all

A very Happy 2001

&

A very Happy

Chinese New Year.

We ended the Year with our usual Christmas Party preceded by our meeting. As usual the food was plentiful and the bag full of gifts for the New Children's Hospital.

A few changes to the format and frequency of future meetings were suggested by our President and enthusiastically accepted by the members present.

The first being that instead of always having a demonstration, members should be encouraged to take an active part in the meetings. He suggested that topics should be chosen and members should bring to the next meeting the results of their endeavours as well as any problems or successes they may have encountered.

This must in no way mean that, should you have nothing to contribute to the discussion, you should not attend the meeting. There is always much to learn from mistakes or otherwise of your fellow artists - over the years I have found that I learn as much from my students as they learn from me -- So we are looking forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the next meeting.

Some members expressed the desire to increase the nimber of meetings to six per year, so we shall go back to meeting on the first Saturday of each even month, unless it falls on a long weekend, in which case the meeting should be on the second Saturday of the month. I shall give all the dates at the end of this newsletter.

It was suggested that the subject for the next meeting should be PAINTING WATER. If you have any problems with this subject, or any success, bring your works along and we shall discuss them together.

Following subjects could be: Rocks, Flowers, Birds, Animals, etc.

A suggested meeting agenda should be as follows:

1. Show paintings and talk briefly about problems and situations

2. Comments from fellow artists on a) Presentation b) Composition c) Brush Work d) Ink and Water.

However many members made it clear that they still enjoy demonstrations so we shall try to incorporate a demonstration into some of our meetigns.

Over the past, some artists have used our insurance company to cover their exhibition and it was suggested that this service should be exclusive to our members.The motion was unanimously approved.

The Treasurer also suggested that with the complication of the GST, it would be a good idea to replace the cash payment we usually make to the artist giving the demonstration with a voucher to be spent at Will's Quills. We feel this is a very small repayment for the generosity shown by William to the Society over the years.

We finally came to the demonstration, this time by Wang Xu.

Those of you who have been members for a long time will remember a previous demonstration by Wang Xu -- as before, he made two large paintings of horses to the delight of some of our members.

He started by making a very lose sketch with charcoal and explained to us that these days this is quite the usual thing. In the past, of course, this was quite frowned upon.

He explained that he prefers to use 2 ply paper, as he likes to use large areas of wet paper. To prove the point, he proceeded to make a few expressive blobs and then let it dry.

He put away the unfinished painting and started on another.This time, two horses. What I enjoyed most was the fact that Wang Xu's English has improved tremendously, and this time he was able to explain at each stage what he was doing.

He explained how important it is to have the whole painting already well planned in one's mind. This became obvious when, with a few well placed strokes and very black ink, he completed the paintings. Suddenly the horses were alive! Thank you Wang Xu, we really valued your demonstration.

Exhibitions.

For obvious reasons, things have been very quiet on the exhibition scene, but there is a very interesting one at the Art Gallery ofNew South Wales called MASKS OF MYSTERY. These are most unusual bronzes uncovered quite recently in the province of Sichuan. Not much is known about this ancient kingdom but one could not but wonder at the vitality of expression in these bronze figures, some quite large in size.

The exhibition will be open until 18 March, so you have plenty of time to go and see it.

As usual there are lots of activities accompanying this exhibition. Well worth a visit.

Obituary

It's with geat sadness that I have received new of the death of Gwen Oatley. Gwen had been a member of the Society since its beginning. She was a keen student of Chinese Art and never missed a meeting until quite recently, when her health started to fail her. She was a generous contributor of prizes for our exhibitions and always supported us.

She will be much missed.

I look forward to seeing you all on 3rd February

Your Secretary,

Mirra Hainsworth.

The Australian Chinese Painting Society

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