Maz’s Muse, Perfectly Imperfect
This month, I’m the featured artist at Bay Gallery, and I’ve decided to do things a little differently.
Rather than hanging perfectly framed pieces with pristine white borders, I’ve taken over the main wall and turned it into something more personal, more raw, more me. Think pages of a sketchbook or a Pinterest board. It’s scrappy, spontaneous, and straight from the soul.
All the works are on paper. Large full sheets of Watercolour Paper. Unframed. Stuck directly to the wall with magnets. They’re plein air pieces, painted out in nature, on location. Each one a moment, captured in real time with the wind picking up the paper, sand in my palette, bugs landing in the paint.
There’s something about watercolour and ink that keeps you honest. You lay it down, and that’s it, no erasing, no fiddling. Every mark is a commitment, especially when the paper itself costs $15 a sheet, so the financial risk of making a mistake is always on your mind. Add to that the challenge of painting outside, where the sun shifts, the wind blows, and people stop to chat, and you’ve got a recipe for chaos. Beautiful chaos.
The act of painting en plein air is frantic, fleeting, full of pressure. I make rapid-fire decisions, grabbing whatever colour is closest, responding in the moment. It’s part performance, part meditation. And more often than not, it’s a mess. But in that mess, those imperfect, unpredictable marks, magic sometimes appears.
The works on display are the survivors. The ones that made it through the selection of many. Each piece is $300, and some will be made into prints as a later offering. Little time capsules of a moment in nature that was never going to repeat.
As a collection, they show the rhythm of the process. Some are soft and quiet. Others are loud and loose. But all of them hold the essence of the place and the person I was while painting them.
If you're near Bay Gallery this month, come have a look. It’s not just an exhibition, it’s a peek into the pages of my outdoor sketchbook. Messy, sandy, inky sketches representing a moment in time.
Open Fridays to Sundays, 10am to 4pm.
Bay Gallery is participating in the Creative Journey Art Trail next weekend. Download the map from https://www.lovecentralcoast.com/creativejourney
– Maz x
