Blots on the landscapes delight artist

A Geraldton artist admits her paintings often feature the sort of grubby details that other landscape painters might choose to omit from their work.

A recently opened exhibition of Chris Graieg’s paintings shows she is not afraid to expose the backside of a nice view.

Her work has been described as being stark, but the schoolteacher and artist relishes the opportunity to immortalise manmade elements such as street signs, graffiti or a rubbish bin in her urban landscapes.

“I love having telephone posts and weird stuff in the foreground. Its generally grotty stuff,” Graieg said.

“I work on the idea of splendour in the ordinary. Everything is beautiful at some time of the day. For me its about composition and light.”

Graieg, who came to Geraldton in 1996, was prompted to exhibit her work again after recently hosting a successful display in the staff room at Strathalbyn Christian College.

Packing in preparation to move to Perth to be closer to family, she decided the Geraldton paintings should be displayed one more time so local people could appreciate the changes in the city over the past 20 years.

The recycled plank wall of the Jaffle Shack cafe in Marine Terrace is the ideal backdrop for more than 20 artworks created in light-fast inks in the Geraldton CBD during the 1990s.

The paintings of streets, shops and shadows from odd angles offer glimpses of familiar buildings such as Queens Park Theatre, the silos, Town Towers, the Army Reserve building, the original regional hospital, Nagle Catholic College, Rangeway drive-ins, the port and the original railway.

Graieg said her pictures reminded people of views that were no longer there.

“Most of those places have changed now, ” she said.

“They were only painted in the 1990s but they have pulled down buildings (such as the Queen’s Hotel), repainted others or chopped down the trees so the views have changed.

“I love Geraldton, I really do. I hate that so much has gone. I don’t like to see when the trees are chopped down — it’s always the trees that go.”

At times, it seems Graieg’s work is only one step ahead of the bulldozers.

“I painted a boat (on Christmas Island) and it sank, a patio and it fell down and a block of units which was pulled down,” she said. “I felt what I was doing was keeping an artistic record of an area.”

The 1990s Geraldton exhibition runs at the Jaffle Shack in Marine Terrace during business hours until January 3. Paintings can be purchased.