NEWS

Winner of the Waverley Art Prize 2009

Stephanie Burns has won the Waverley Art Prize in two categories with one painting. The painting “Table Tennis” won the Open Prize of $5000, sponsored by Waverley Council and the $1000 Works on Paper Prize sponsored by Charles Hewitt Gallery. Both prizes are acquisitive causing a dilemma for the organisers, as no one has won two prizes with the same painting before.

Table Tennis 2009
Acrylic on arches aquarelle, 53 x 74 cm

Stephanie's Biography

Artist

Stephanie Burns is currently working full-time again as an artist after seven years of running her own gallery in Canberra. Her new work is in a new medium and has come about out of necessity. The dexterity she had previously which allowed her to make large sculptures and collages is gone. Last year Stephanie was diagnosed with arthritis in her hands and since then has had to completely rethink how she would continue to wrok as an artist.

Stephanie chose painting as her new medium and has been experimenting for a year to develop a technique that suits her capabilities and that can develop aesthetically to the standard that was achieved in sculpture in the past. the artist has developed a new way of relating visually to the Australian landscape through this technique of throwing and splashing the paint. This method allows her the freedom to manipulate the image as it emerges through the layers of paint. The potential for innovation which develops during the process as the paint hits the canvas at speed and then records the arrested motion is an exciting new development in her artistic practice. There is a lot of accident involved in the process which is then manipulated into a subject that becomes familiar to the viewer. The happy accidents, when recognised, allow innovative progressive steps to develop in the work at a faster rate than if the paint was controlled at all times.

Painting is a new adventure for Stephanie and one that has enormous potential for development because she hasn't pursued it as a discipline since art school. "I am happy with the style and content of the paintings so far, but know that I have a lot of developing and experimenting ahead of me", says the artist.

Commonwealth Valuer

The Secretary to the Department of communications, Information Technology and the Arts has approved Stephanie Burns from 8 April 2008 to undertake valuations for the Cultural Gifts Program run by the Australian government, in the following classes of property:
Australian paintings, sculptures, ceramics, drawings and prints after 1900;
and artists and writers archives after 1950.
The Cultural Gifts Program encourages gifts of significant cultural items to public art galleries, museums and libraries by offering donors a tax deduction for the market value of their gifts. The Secretary to the Department of Communications and the Arts appoints valuers to participate in the program. Valuers are required to carry out valuation work with diligence and competence and act at all times with honesty, integrity and impartiality.

Sculpture Park

Stephanie and Stephen are well underway building The Sculpture Park in Yass.

Stephanie and Stephen are building a sculpture park in Yass. The 7 acre property, 3 mins from the Hume Highway, will be open to the public for the first time in autumn 2012. The Sculpture Park will be based on garden rooms for individual sculptures rather than large lawn areas with sculptures strategically place around the grounds. There will be many avenues to walk along and numerous water features to view during spring and autumn annually. The twice yearly sculptural events will be widely publicised. If you would like to be added to the mailing list please contact Stephanie on info@stephanieburns.com.au

Editor of Art Influence

Stephanie Burns has launched a new online art magazine, www.artinfluence.com , with her son and co-editor, Laurence Fuller; the magazine is run by the Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation. The Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation changed leadership recently. Stephanie Burns was the founder of the British charity in 1991 and widow of the esteemed critic Peter Fuller. She heads the new board of Trustees with Fuller’s children, Laurence Fuller and Sylvia Turner. Together they are bringing the focus of the foundation back to concentrate on the work and ideas of Peter Fuller, one of Britain’s great art critics, starting with the launch of Art Influence, a quarterly online magazine.

Art Influence, www.artinfluence.com , is a premier international forum for critical debate on the arts. It includes writing by eminent people on culturally and politically significant events and will also include an archive of the annual lectures hosted by the Peter Fuller Memorial Foundation at the Tate Gallery in London, over the last two decades and reprints of Peter Fuller’s writing.

For all enquiries please contact Stephanie Burns at info@stephanieburns.com.au