This is the 11th SALA festival, celebrating South Australian Living Artists.
It is an annual, state-wide Art festival celebrating, as the name suggest, living artists. Not only can you get more work from them in the future (unlike van Gogh) you can also watch them work in Open Studio’s, with hundred’s of free exhibitions, workshops and moving image events.
The organisers actively encourage audience participation, after all, this festival is all for and by the people of South Australia. It provides a chance for you to get to know your talented local artists, who are scattered in every corner of this wonderful State. Woodside is no exception.
The Providore Café is hosting its 3rd SALA exhibition and owner, Simone Joyce, is very much in favour of festivals and events like this. “Sponsoring local art and produce provides a real local flavour and supports the people, it’s the only way to run a country business”, she says.
Woodside artist, Jacinta Smart (pictured left) is one of a trio exhibiting at the Providore, who call themselves ‘the Artists in the Shed’. Jacintas’ painting, ‘a Windswept Summer’ (pictured left), is a stark reminder in this cold wet winter, of how hard last summer was.
It is a vivid painting full of movement and life, evoking the mouth drying summer wind that dominated the season. Jacinta said she was inspired by the desperate but beautiful environment resulting from the dry summer and once she’d started, she couldn’t stop (which is evident in her four other paintings in the exhibition).
She says of the Adelaide Hills environment, “it’s so moving that its really hard not to embrace it in your art”. Johanna Paddick and Lynette Kaeding complete the trio, who are a talented, eclectic group with different but thought provoking styles.
It’s certainly worth a trip to the Woodside Providore and indeed a tour of SALA in the Hills. The festival finishes this weekend, but if you visit the SALA website www.salafestival.com (or phone 8218 8450) you will find a local venue worth a visit.
“The Dress” by Johanna Paddick.
“Textured Leaves” by Lynette Kaeding.
