Judith Cameron celebrated in retrospective gallery exhibition

Judith Cameron’s lifelong dedication to art has been celebrated in a retrospective exhibition at the Narrabri Art & Craft Society.

The official opening of ‘Journey’, a mixed media exhibition featuring Mrs Cameron’s extensive works spanning six decades, was held on Saturday morning.
It was standing room only with the Dangar Street gallery filled with Mrs Cameron’s family, friends and fellow artists for the special occasion.

“I’m very excited to see so many people here,” Mrs Cameron told the capacity gathering at the gallery.

“It gives me so much enjoyment to create them,” she said of her works during her address.

Mrs Cameron said Robin Stieger had come up with the idea of the retrospective exhibition.

Helen de Frederick was invited to officially open the display.

As reported in The Courier recently, Mrs Cameron was born in the Wee Waa Hospital and raised on the family farm outside Burren Junction.

Artistic talent came at an early age, with Mrs Cameron making her first dress at nine-years-old from an old floral bedspread. She also illustrated the margins of her Blackfriars Correspondence School good books as well as the weather charts in which cloud formations for that day were recorded.

From 1957, ‘Murilla’ on the Spring Plains Road was Mrs Cameron’s home with Malcolm. Her love of learning continued and was supported. She enrolled herself in a Fine Art course conducted by The University of Southern Queensland.

Peter Chapman, of Wee Waa, was another of her teachers. Here she learnt the discipline of drawing and most especially architectural drawing.

Perspective, observation and measurement. The mediums used were pencil, pen and ink and watercolour. Judith began sketching outside using for her subjects the old woolsheds and man-made structures dotted around her district. Her love of history and her enquiry into ‘…what things were like for other people’ came together in the first of her self-published books in 2003 , ‘Woolsheds and Stories with a Grain of Salt’. This is an illustrated history of the district containing 67 original drawings. Later came ‘More Stories With a Grain of Salt’, another 27 recorded stories of the families around her.

In the 1980s Judith came across a completely different approach to art making. The Flying Arts Alliance sent creatively amazing contemporary tutors to conduct workshops in places like the CWA Rooms in Wee Waa. These tutors introduced the concept of the process of art making and stretched the idea of art materials to a new exciting horizon. Bitumen, ‘No-More-Gaps’, texture with tissue paper, all sorts of collage material, printing collagraphs with a plate made from found objects,these were some of the experiences that suited Mrs Cameron perfectly.

Mrs Cameron continues to make art and is a valued member of Narrabri’s ‘Creative Friends’. Her recent work is a return to pen and ink and watercolour. Joyous, colourful vases full of flowers.

The exhibition will be on display at the Dangar Street gallery for several weeks.