Bellarine Arts Trail showcases region’s best and brightest artists
Nic Everist and Jess Stoney are among more than 90 local creatives who will be out in force for next month’s Bellarine Arts Trail.
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Ocean Grove 15-year-old Jess Stoney admits it’s pretty cool that she will be the youngest artist to ever exhibit at the Bellarine Arts Trail.
Jess is one of more than 90 professional and emerging artists from across the Bellarine Peninsula who will showcase their work at studios, exhibition venues and galleries in Barwon Heads, Ocean Grove, Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff for the upcoming trail.
The Bellarine Arts Trail’s headline event, the Taste of the Trail exhibition, kicks off tonight.
The free, artist-led community event features work from the artists participating in the trail, giving visitors an opportunity to see a sample of each artist’s work and plan their arts trail experience for the first weekend of November.
For Jess, drawing has been a constant in her life as far back as she can remember, and in recent years she’s developed and fine tuned her vibrant and eye-catching cartoon style.
“It’s quite a different, unique style. I can’t really find a name for it, it’s like bright, pop doodle, a bit of everything. It just grabs your attention,” she says.
Jess uses wooden board canvases and Posca markers – a type of paint marker – to bring her work to life, creating little characters and objects.
When Jess describes her creative process she makes it sound simple: “I give it a bit of a spray paint on the background, sketch up what I’m going to do and get the Poscas and basically add the colour and details, and voila.”
But when you see the finished product, it looks anything but simple, and hours of work go into creating one of her masterpieces.
The scale of Jess’s artwork varies, as does what she draws on, having worked on a skateboard, bike helmet, shoes and phone case.
“At home I’m drawing all the time in my free time, even in class when I shouldn’t be,” Jess says.
“I love using bright colours. It’s just nice to see colour. People need bright colours and happiness.”
The high school student is looking forward to her first art exhibition. It may be the first of many and while Jess predicts art is likely in her future, she’s not thinking too far ahead.
“To do this is just a big step to getting my art out there and to share it,” she says.
Barwon Heads landscape artist Nic Everist will also exhibit her work at the trail, an event she has been helping to organise as a member of the Bellarine Arts Trail Committee.
Nic leads art business mentoring and coaching to share her knowledge and support others wanting to pursue a full-time art career. She also hosts The Full Time Artist podcast that shares business tips and tools and stories from other artists on how they have built success.
Her work as a full-time artist is a sharp turn from her previous job as a physiotherapist.
“Within a very short time frame, I realised (physiotherapy) wasn’t for me,” Nic says.
“It wasn’t inspiring me or exciting me to get up and go to work every day.”
“I went back to drawing and crafting and creating to help my mental health, and then I just fell in love with it and very quickly decided this is what I want to do.”
Becoming a full-time artist wasn’t an overnight process for Nic and she returned part-time to physiotherapy while she built her art practice and business.
When Nic started to transition from physiotherapy to art, it had been many years since she had been creative, so she experimented with portraits, charcoal drawings and abstract before she found her specialty.
“I got into the abstracts and pouring paint on canvas and things but then I found that they weren’t challenging my problem-solving brain enough,” Nic says.
On a trip to South America, Nic was blown away by a mountain range that looked as though paint had been poured over it, similar to the way she poured paint onto a canvas.
That breathtaking view sparked an obsession with travelling and exploring new locations that Nic now transports on to the canvas.
“Travelling is a part of my work so I feel like I’ve really manipulated the system there a little bit,” she says.
“Moving down to the coast, there’s so much inspiration everywhere you look down here. Inspiration is abundant.”
Using acrylic on canvas, Nic pours paint on a flat canvas and, once dry, stands it up and adds the detail of a particular landscape.
“I use nature as my therapy and to sort through my inner dialogue and thoughts,” she says. “I bring those stories back to the studio and connect them with the landscapes in the hope of sharing my story and helping others connect their inner world with the landscapes and beauty around them.”
Exploring nature and paying attention to the world around her allows Nic to organise her thoughts, clear her head, and be present, something she finds “really rewarding and addicting”.
The Barwon Heads Arts Council and Bellarine Arts Trail Committee are leading the arts trail and Taste of the Trail, with support from Barwon Heads Bendigo Bank, Borough of Queenscliffe and Queenscliffe Community Market.
The official opening of the Taste of the Trail exhibition is on tonight from 6pm to 8pm at the Barwon Heads Arts Hub. Register at trybooking.com/CVPGG
The Taste of the Trail exhibition runs until November 4 and the Bellarine Arts Trail is on from November 2-3.
Follow @nic_everist_art and @jeckarstar_1510 on Instagram and visit bhac.org.au/bellarineartstrail
Originally published as Bellarine Arts Trail showcases region’s best and brightest artists
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