This book features sketches and paintings of musicians who play or played with the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) together with notes from the artist. Preparatory sketches for the finished portraits are included as they offer insights both into the lives of this group of inspiring musicians as well as the artist’s practice and inspirations.
In 2020 when the pandemic closed borders the musical sketches provided a fertile resource for orchestral paintings.
The paintings and sketches in this book are available for purchase (sizes and prices are below) and all funds go to ACO education initiatives one of which supports musical education for some of the most disadvantaged primary school students in Sydney. The program is having the most marvelous success. Get in touch with the artist through our contact page.
The Painted Orchestra is available at your local bookstore or on Amazon.
Size of sketches and paintings
The watercolour on the left, a close-up of head and violin, is painted on 24x32cm (9.45×12.59″) 200g/m2 paper like most of the ink/watercolour works in this book. A few are larger (30x40cm) and others are A4 (21x29cm).
Watercolours painted during performances like the small work on the right of Yuja Wang playing piano, are smaller: 15×21 cm.
The acrylic paintings and larger watercolour portraits featured in the book also vary in size. The sizes are given in the captions of each painting. Watercolour portraits are on full sized (76x56cm) Arches rag paper and are painted with archive quality paints.
Photo of the artist’s watercolour paintbox (archival quality paints made by Schminke).
Prices (all proceeds to the ACO education fund.)
Watercolour sketches: AUD300-600
Large Watercolour portraits: AUD3000
Acrylics/Oils are priced according to size and start at AUD900.
Portraits and Abstractions
Recent work, some of them semi-abstractions, which feature musicians of the Australian Chamber Orchestra are shown at the end of the book. Here are a few snippets of the paintings.
