LATEST EVENTS Blair McNamara's sea-side painting studio

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) September 30, 2008 -- Media release 30/9/08

AUSTRALIAN, Coolum Beach, Artist BLAIR McNAMARA
www.blairmcnamara.com

Throughout September, Coolum Beach has been under the spotlight in central Hong Kong with Australian painter Blair McNamara’s o c e a n i c a s e m a n t i c a art exhibition at the State-Of-The-Arts Gallery in Pottinger Street. Officially opened by Australia’s Senior Trade Commissioner (Austrade) & Deputy Consul-General to Hong Kong as well as the President of the Royal Over-Seas League, Tourism Queensland and the Hong Kong Office of Trade Queensland, visitors to the gallery have also been experiencing the unique beauty of Coolum’s coastline with McNamara’s outdoor “oceanica” art film and slide projections. Last week, Blair returned to his sea-side studio to continue work on a new series of paintings commissioned by the gallery.

Blair McNamara has also just been selected as 2009’s ‘Artist-In-Residence’ at the Bundaberg Arts Centre to facilitate a number of community art projects to research and record the impacts of ‘seachange’ on Bundaberg’s coastal communities from the Town Of 1770 (Agnes Waters) to Bargara. His 2005, “cood-a-bin-shood-a-bin” art exhibition at the University Of The Sunshine Coast Art Gallery generated much public and media attention. The ‘timely’ artistic portrayal and specific focus on Coolum poignantly presented and questioned the past, present and future for all coastal communities. McNamara’s artistic research into the cultural map and built environments of the Coral Coast will culminate as a major multi-media public art exhibition in November 2009, for their community to contemplate.

Blair McNamara respects and loves the global beach. Much of his painting maps the changing coastal plain and explores the meaning of coastal liveability by interpreting the intrinsic values of Queensland’s coastal environment, evolving culture and position in the Pacific. Not unlike a topographer, McNamara charts the geographical issues of the seascape in combination with his own intuitive artistic urges by using painting, photography, mixed media and sculptural form to set up a dialogue about the past and present. Blair sees oceanic elements as ‘the arena of all meaning’. His life-long love of surfing continues to creatively influence his painting.
For more information his website is www.blairmcnamara.com

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