INTO THE DESERT

Plein Air Painting Expedition and Exhibition - MacDonnell Ranges, April 2024

Support Corinne in making a series of plein-air paintings in the Red Centre that will invite urban audiences to consider the desert’s mystical, sacred and environmental importance. Become a Patron Now

‘The Red Centre holds a unique position in the psyche and mythology of all Australians. Journey with me as I connect with nature and explore the majesty and extremes of the desert.’

Together with Melbourne pianist, Elyane Laussade, this concert and exhibition explores interpretations and evocations of nature’s elemental processes as reflected in the compositions of composers such as Debussy, Ravel & Chopin. See more here

Saturday 12, Thursday 17 and Sunday 20 October 2024 at The Laussade Studio, Doncaster East, Melbourne

Sunday 13 October at Christ Church Castlemaine, VIC

Concert and a full meal from $65 (Matinee) to $85

Connecting With Creative Flow | Corinne Loxton | TEDx Katoomba

At TEDx Katoomba on 30th June 2023, Corinne shared images and personal stories, exploring creativity and the nature of artistic flow. She spoke about how her landscapes are imbued with human experiences of joy, hope loss, and longing and in particular, her spiritual encounters in nature.

RECENT EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS

Realms and Ranges

An Exhibition of Plein Air and Studio Paintings made in the Capertee Valley and the Blue Mountains

December 2023

Painting en plein air (in the landscape) is challenging and invigorating… it requires absolute focus, endurance and a sense of humour. When kids coo-ee to me from lookouts or interested trail walkers stop to chat, when the sun blazes, the wind gusts and the shadows shift, I have to flex and stretch, accommodating each new variable and staying in the flow.

Each day of this recent painting trip to the Capertee Valley I shared musings and photos from my majestic outdoor studio. You can check this out on Facebook or Instagram - and please make sure to comment and let me know your thoughts!

Watch Corinne painting and read more: Finding Solace in the Bush | Lower Blue Mountains Local News

Passages - Paintings from Warrumbungles and Closer to Home

at Stella Downer Fine Art

Wed 28th June - Sun 29th July 2023 Exhibition

OPENING DRINKS with Corinne on Sat 1 July, 3 - 5 pm

You can also hear a repeat of her TEDx talk on Saturday 29 July at the gallery at 3 pm

Gallery Hours: Tues - Fri 10-5 pm, Sat 11 am - 5 pm, Sun Closed

1/24 Wellington ST, Waterloo, NSW 2017 Ph: 0402 018 283 ​E: info@stelladownerfineart.com

Recent Paintings From the Warrumbungles, Wollemi and Closer to Home

Lower Mountains Gallery and Corinne’s Studio in Blaxland, NSW 2774

 Saturday 3rd & Sunday 4th December 2022, 10 am - 4 pm

(If you are visiting the Mountains for the day, here are my top picks of local things to do)

This poem by Mary Oliver encapsulates my half-crazy process for making this series of paintings and where my head was and loves to be!

Foolishness? No, It’s Not

Sometimes I spend all day trying to count leaves on a single tree. To do this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a little book. So I suppose, from their point of view it’s reasonable that my friends say: what foolishness! She’s got her head in the clouds again!

But it’s not. Of course I have to give up, but by then I am half crazy with the wonder of it – the abundance of the leaves, the quietness of the branches, the hopelessness of my effort. And I am in that delicious and important place, roaring with laughter, full of earth-praise.

From expansive space to enclosing place… As I progress with these paintings, I invite the viewer both to soar within the infinite skies and to explore the intimate abundance of the bushland. Although not obvious from these photos, the skies are tiny 20 x 20 cm pieces that belie the magnitude of their subject. Both the skyscapes and the slightly bigger bush images (30 x 30 cm) require the viewer to approach them closely to experience fully the worlds they represent.

This series of paintings, like the reflection works I made last year, explore my search for meaning and redemption within a painful personal journey of living with loss, shifting realities and obscured horizons. Read more…

You can follow my painting expedition in the Warrumbungles and Wollemi NP on Facebook or read the article published in the Coonabarabran Times

Lindfield Art Show and Fair 2022

2 - 4 Highfield Rd, Lindfield, NSW 2070

 Saturday 5th Nov, 9 am - 5 pm and Sunday 6th Nov 2022, 9 am - 12 pm

Opening Night Cocktail Evening 4th Nov 2022, 7.30 pm - 11 pm, Tickets and info here

On Saturday, between 11.30 am and 4.30 pm, I will be painting on-site to share my creative process with visitors to the exhibition. If you have questions about working with oil paint, painting clouds or skies or anything else art-related, come along and ask.

The Stuartholme Sacré Coeur Association presents

Exposition des Beaux Arts 2022

Stuartholme School, 365 Birdwood Terrace, Toowong QLD 4066

Saturday 13 August 6 pm - 9 pm - Sunday 14 August 10 am - 2pm 2022

JULY 2022 EXHIBITION

‘Spirit of Place’

BRAEMAR GALLERY SPRINGWOOD

Thursday 7 - Sunday 31 July 2022

104 Macquarie Road, SPRINGWOOD NSW 2777

Gallery Open: Thursdays to Sundays, 10 am - 4 pm

OPENING FUNCTION: Saturday 9 July, 2 - 4 pm

To be presided by Susan Templeman MP, Federal Member for Macquarie

The fundraising raffle will be drawn at the conclusion of the exhibition

About ‘Spirit of Place’

As I walk in the bush each day, with senses wide open, receptive to the wisdom of trees, the call of the rocks and the wind’s murmuring, I receive deep soul nourishing. Each happening has the capacity to stir in me, a recognition of primaeval stories, of people and spirits connected through the familiar pathways, the trees, birds and reptiles.

In my work you will recognise the expansive skies and vistas of the Blue Mountains as well as hidden jewels, like Glenbrook Lagoon. The images invite you ‘in’, to contemplate both the ethereal beauty and mystery of nature, and your own interior world. Reflections on glassy water, windswept clouds, rising mist or stands of trees; all ground us in the present, while evoking the untamed and sacred spirit of place.

About the April 2022 Exhibition

You may have wondered where I’ve been or perhaps life has been so strange the past year, that you’ve been busy coming to terms with that. Either way, I’m really happy to be inviting you to celebrate my 50th birthday with me!

Reaching half a century today feels like a seminal moment in my life. Yet, it comes with some ambivalence. As a woman, an artist, a mother and recently a wife, I want to celebrate and acknowledge experiencing both, joys and grief, wins and losses. Despite society’s pressure to live as ageless or ‘age-defying’, I want to claim the lines on my face and the marks on my body as a physical testament to a life lived, so far with full intention.

As I reflected on reaching this milestone, I realised that this year I also celebrate 30 years of painting landscapes.

Many of you know that I grew up at the foot of the splendid peaks of Table Mountain, in South Africa and spent my weekends on the water sailing dinghies, so the natural world permeated my consciousness from a young age. I recall learning mindfulness from my grandmother in the late seventies, well before it became fashionable – as she would guide me to stop on the Hermanus clifftops to pay attention and to breathe.

Yet coming to Australia at the age of 15 literally threw me into a world I felt alien to. The light, smells and colours were all different. I felt lost; a lover of nature, yet unable to truly connect with the landscape I found myself in.

As a young artist in the 90’s I sought to express my longing for a place to belong. My paintings reflected both, my search for the sacred and my desire for an intimate relationship with nature and place. Yet, rather than recognizable landscapes, my paintings were more akin to abstract colour fields, they imaged non-specific, imaginary and void-like spaces rather than particular places.

It wasn’t until 2012, when I moved from the inner west of Sydney to Blaxland in the Lower Mountains, that this longing was answered. My daily walks in the bush with my dog gradually dissolved my fears of the bush and its hidden mysteries and as this happened my paintings changed.

As I started noticing the minutiae of the familiar bushland tracks, these places and their spirit became part of my artist’s language. Gone are the void-like images that suggested a spiritual crisis in consciousness and a dislocation of self. Instead, my paintings now speak about how particular places and experiences uniquely evoke the sacred, the magic and mystery of nature and the human condition. They explore both a universal connection to nature and the specificity of place, light, colour and mood. Where once my work was an expression of my homelessness – now my paintings truly are an exploration of self and nature as home.

I hope to see you soon!

About Corinne’s Painting Process

Corinne Loxton’s paintings are inspired by many hours spent wandering and paying attention to nature - the colours, textures, light and shadow of her local landscape in the Blue Mountains and other places she visits. Not simply an empirical study of nature’s phenomena, her paintings evoke nature’s processes of transformation and renewal, embodying complex narratives of life - the balance and paradox of pain and pleasure, love and loss.

Corinne writes, “I experience mountains as places of intimate spiritual communion. They literally lift me up, casting my gaze above and beyond, to contemplate an ‘other’ reality, one that transcends and simultaneously inhabits me. Labyrinth-like the Blue Mountains invite me to delve down into the valleys to discover its secrets, while transporting me into mystical places.”

For the past 25 years Corinne has been painting ethereal land and sky scapes. As well as working in her Blue Mountains studio, Corinne has worked directly from nature, in many locations around Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Corinne’s technique varies considerably, depending on whether she is painting ‘alla prima’ en plein air or in the studio. The smaller works made outdoors are created with an immediacy and spontaneity necessitated by working directly from the subject, to capture the ever-changing effects of light and colour. In contrast, the studio paintings that still reflect Corinne’s preoccupation with beauty and her sense of wonder at the majesty of nature, are developed using many layers of transparent paint to develop the complexity of colour and feeling in each work.