Bringing art to life

Her works are inspired by her love of horses, in both a physical and metaphorical sense.

It’s no surprise as her grandfather and father both bred Thoroughbred racehorses, while her brother breeds Stock Horses.

Her sister’s family played polocrosse professionally and in her younger days, Nancy represented NSW in pony club championships and competed in campdrafting.

“The horses in my artwork are actual horses that have been part of my life,” she said.

“My background subconsciously filters into the work, or the horse might be a metaphor for human emotions and feelings.

“Like any artist, what you produce is what you’ve seen or experienced.”

Life in the bush and outback landscapes also feature in her work.

Nancy is sixth generation on the land and grew up at Sunnyside, Spring Plains, north-west of Wee Waa.

Today she lives with her partner Stephen Falkiner and daughter Sahvanah on Murrumbilla, 20 minutes north of Narrabri.

In her written piece, Scapes from Here to There, Nancy vividly recalls the day she wanted to become an artist.

“My mother took me to the Art Gallery of NSW – I was seven or eight years old,” she said.

“I immediately fell in love with all those wonderful paintings. So genteel, romantic, and rendered beautifully and skilfully was Elioth Gruner’s Spring Frost 1919.

“I was particularly taken by Across the Black Soil Plains 1899 by George Washington Lambert.

“The grandeur and beauty, harshness and strength of the outback are epitomised in this painting.”

She has worked as a professional, mixed-media artist for more than 20 years, and her works include metal sculptures, collages, ink drawings and paintings.

Nancy has obtained her diploma and associate diploma of fine arts, a BA in visual arts, graduate diploma of education, and a manual metal arc course.

Reflecting on her time spent exploring Australia and travelling overseas has formed another font of ideas.

“When my sister and I left school we went around Australia and Papua New Guinea in 1987.

“We worked on horse studs and bought a car off my aunt, a Mazda 323. We were the only ones our age – travelling wasn’t as big then.

“My cousin was in PNG so we left the car in Cairns, and I taught horse riding while I was over there.”

She spent 10 months exploring international art galleries, after receiving the McGregor Art Fellowship through the University of Southern Queensland in 2001.

It was also a prime opportunity to delve into her Irish and Scottish heritage.

“I would go to different galleries and if I found something horse related it played an influence in the work,” she said.

“Some of my pieces were inspired by artwork of horses I saw in London and Rome.”

Her latest exhibition, Bush Pony, was officially opened on Sunday, May 11, at the Roma on Bungil Gallery.

Bush Pony will be on display at Roma until June 22, and Nancy is planning a solo show in Tamworth at the end of 2014.

The Etruscan and Celtic artefacts she saw during her time abroad have influenced some of her exhibits.

Others reflect on horses and family from her childhood.

“My exhibition in Roma is a body of work, where the ideas have evolved over the past 10 years,” she said.

“Some of the works were only finished on Wednesday, though, and we went up to Roma on Thursday.”

Although she is passionate about all her works, Nancy enjoys the immediacy of drawing.

“If I’m not building a sculpture, I am designing on scraps of paper – I draw without realising it.

“The difficult thing is being honest with yourself, but it is those really honest artworks that seem to be the ones that have sold.

“It’s about accepting who you are and putting it down on paper.”