The Cascade Art Gallery is just down the road from my new abode, so it would be very remiss of me not to keep up to date with what Kareen Anchen and Jeff Gardner have been up to during the 2020 COVID dry. 

Kareen, a passionate supporter of the arts said that,  ‘Writing my book about David Moore – Painter has kept me sane. Words and Art can do that for us…’ 

Kareen is the Gallery Director of Cascade Art in Maldon. Together with Artist partner Jeff Gardner, they have built up a successful and valued arts business in the community of Maldon, and continue to champion, support, and endorse noteworthy emerging and professional visual artists.

Meanwhile, their Cascade Gallery is doing a lot of firsts, which include: partnering with Experience Maldon (for bookings and ticketing), Blackbird Café and Welshman’s Reef Vineyard (for catering), and most importantly expanding the gallery space to enhance the potential of their lovely former Uniting Church building. In fact, while I was talking to Kareen, a man came in and said, ‘I’ve come to say a prayer’.

Kareen and Jeff plan to hold eight-week exhibitions, which are a lot longer than in the past, to give people time to get here in COVID normal times.

In addition, Kareen has turned her professional abilities towards writing arts appreciation. Hence her new book about David Moore, which has been edited by local professional editor (and painter) Melanie Scaife. 

In 2021 there will be seated floor talks, and evening talks, involving paying customers. In the past most of this has been ‘free’, so it is a big perception shift.  The floor talks are scattered throughout March and April. Some are scheduled during the Castlemaine State Festival, two nights with wine and canapés from the Blackbird Café, and two daytime talks, with afternoon tea. 

David Moore is an Australian painter living and working in Castlemaine. Still life and landscape are his preferred subjects, and his chosen medium is oil paint on linen or cedar wood panel, and gouache on paper.

David has been painting since he was 11 years old. As a child, he would sit alongside his father’s easel at their home in Croydon, Melbourne, and be instructed in the painting techniques of tonal realism.

In 1970, David was awarded the Alice M. E. Bale scholarship, which afforded him a studio and use of a house, with a few bills paid. He was assigned two painting mentors, Sir William Dargie CBE and Harley Griffiths. The latter, his preferred mentor, was chief restorer at the National Gallery of Victoria. He took David behind the scenes to see The Banquet of Cleopatra, the enormous 18th century Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painting, as it was being restored. For David, it was an exciting glimpse of art history being made and preserved, and reinforced for the aspiring painter the realisation that some people value painting highly indeed!

Kareen attended classes for about a year in his Song to the Moon studio in Elphinstone, to learn more about tonal painting and hear his endless stream of amazing stories.

To quote him, ‘A painting cannot relay emotion if no emotion is felt during the work. I believe that the real effect and feeling aroused by a subject can only be understood and communicated when the artist relates directly to the subject matter.’ 

The preview is from 5 - 7pm, Saturday 6 March, 2021. Peter Perry, Fine Art Valuer and Assessor will officially open the exhibition. 

David Moore – Painter, the new book by Kareen Anchen will be launched at the preview. The book is full of great images of his deceptively understated tonal work, with descriptions and stories, which capture his thoughts and ideas.

For further information contact: 0408 844 152 or kareen@cascadeart.com.au.

Bookings are essential, due to COVID requirements www.experiencemaldon.com.au/maldon-experiences.