Dear Member,

As this will be the last newsletter of the year, may I take this opportunity

to wish you

All the best
For the Festive Season.

As usual, we would like to ask you to bring a small plate for our party and if possible a gift for the children of the New Children Hospital.

I would like to elnphasize that this is not obligatory, but should you wish to bring something please make sure it is a new toy, wrapped and clearly labeled for Boy or Girl and a suggestion of the child's age.

As is customary, the Annual Report was read to members at the August meeting and for the benefit of those who did not attend, I will reproduce it below.

ACPS ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
JULY 1999---JUNE 2000

Two events stand out during this year. We organized an Exhibition of Small Painting, admirably thought of by our President, Andrew Lo and organized by our Treasurer Maggie De Courcy.

We also enjoyed the FRAGRANT SPACE EXHIBITION at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, which many of us visited. Two ofthe three artists who took part in the three Painting Demonstration were members of our Society and it is hoped that this will encourage mem bers of the public to join our Society.

Demonstrations were given, among others, by Prof. Shen Mo, visiting Sydney at the time and Andrew Lo, whose innovations are always of great interest to the members.

We have had several new members joining the Society--this is very encouraging and we hope the trend will continue.

Several of our members have exhibited at the Chinese Cultural Centre and perhaps the time has come to consider a furture exhibition in their premises as soon as we find some volunteers to help organize one.

The Treasurer reported that at the end of the financial year our bank balance stood at $3009.86.

The demonstration at the meeting was given by Mr Chiu, a scholar and painter in the traditional style. He started by painting some orchids and then went on to paint a landscape.

Our President, Andrew Lo, recently returned from China told us that Chinese artists were very interested in our aims and achievements but they felt that our paintings should relate more to our own environment.
Consequently he encouraged us to revise our ideas for our book/catalogue and paint more local subjects.

Back to your paper and brushes!

I recently received my copy of the Magazine Orientations to which I have been devoted for the last twenty years.

Every arrival is cause of great pleasure, but the September issue was particularly so. Almost the whole magazine was dedicated to the Art Gallery of New South Wales with two articles by Edmond Capon on the origin of the Asian Collection and Modern Chinese painting with emphasis on the Shanghai School, Jackie Menzies wrote about Japanese figure painting and Liu Yang on Chinese Buddhist Sculpture.

The magazine should still be on specialized news-stands. Should you be unable to find one, you could always write directly to

Orientations
17th Floor, 200 Lockhart Road
Hong Kong.
E-mail: orientations@iohk. com

At this time, when most of us think of Christmas presents and you are often confronted with the question "What do you want for a present?" why not suggest a year's subscription to this prestigious magazine? For A $ 137 you will get 1O beautiful magazines with interesting articles on all aspects of oriental art from all over the world, information about exhibitions, auctions, galleries news and book reviews as well as interviews with collectors and connoisseurs.

EXHIBITIONS

Angela Tay is holding an exhibition of her works entitled "WATER STAINS" at

Glebe Branch Library
186 Glebe Point Road,
Glebe

Until 17 November. For further details ring 9817 2688

For most of you it will probably be too late to visit an exhibition on CONTEMPORPARY ART FROM CHINA held at Mosman Art Gallery & Community Centre. The Exhibition will end on 12 November, so ifyou hurry you may catch a glimpse .

It is encouraging to see that more and more galleries are now prepared to exhibit Chinese paintings. Our friend, Shen Mo held an exhibition at the Cutcliffe Gallery in Newtown, which unfortunately closed before this newsletter was written.

The Chinese Cultural Centre is planning an exhibition of Chinese paintings by an artist from Hong Kong. At present I cannot give you more details but hope to do so at our next meeting.

And now it only remains to me to leave you with the hope that we shall see many of you at our

Christmas Party on 25 November.

Your Secretary,

Mirra Hainsworth

--- Newsletter ---

January 2001

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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